


King in Yellow

by LastAmericanMermaid



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Cults, Detectives, Flashbacks, Heavy Angst, Hydra is the sprawl, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Louisiana, M/M, Murder, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Torture, This fic is going to get pretty dark, Triggers, True Detective AU, carcosa, homicide investigation, if you've seen TD you'll get it, no one is happy, the end will be pretty ok I promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-06
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-12 13:41:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 61,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7107268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LastAmericanMermaid/pseuds/LastAmericanMermaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2003, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes catch a disturbing case. </p><p>Religion and insidious families in the deep south tangle up to confuse and obfuscate the investigation. Each detective has his own demons to fight off. </p><p>In 2011, there's another murder, same MO. </p><p>(An AU based heavily on True Detective season 1, in which Bucky is Marty and Steve is Rust. Things won't be exactly the same as the show, though, obviously. Many liberties will be taken. What on earth has possessed me to do this?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Long Bright Dark

**Author's Note:**

> What do I have to say for myself?
> 
> I honestly do not know. 
> 
> Please read, but be warned, there are some references, mildly graphic, to child abuse in this chapter. I will add warnings before each chapter, just for future reference. The ones in this chapter will be in any section which begins with '1986.'

_2011 - Vermilion Parish, LA_

  
“You know why you’re here, Mr. Barnes?” The tall, blonde detective of the pair folds her hands and leans forward a little. It’s posturing, simple as anything; everything in the goddamn world is posturing. Making sure everyone knows whose dick is bigger.

Bucky snorts, reaching for the cigarette tucked behind his ear. With the unlit cig in his mouth, he smiles.

“I don’t imagine you brought me in for tea and conversation,” he replies wryly, digging around in the pocket of his dirty jeans until he comes up with the zippo. He lights the cigarette, takes a long drag.

“There’s no smoking in—” the other detective starts to say, but he clamps down on whatever trite warning he’s about to give when Blondie shoots him a knife-sharp glare.

There’s a camera on a tripod, and Bucky can’t help resenting it; its lens like the eye of a cyclops, staring at him unblinkingly. A little red light is flashing.

“You wanna hear about Lorna Dane, right? I’m not stupid, detectives.” Bucky exhales the smoke up towards the ceiling. “And little Marie Fontenot? Old case, closed it back in ’04. Oughta leave it that way.”

“Nobody’s calling you stupid, Mr. Barnes,” the male detective says carefully, glancing at his partner. “And yes, the case was closed, but a lot of those files were lost in the aftermath of Katrina. We just wanted to go over the details of the case, since you worked on it for so long.”

Bucky grins, cigarette in hand, not bothering to worry about the ashes falling on the table.

“Well, shit.” He leans back a little in his chair. “There’s been another one, hasn’t there?”

Blondie—she’d introduced herself as Detective Carter, but Bucky couldn’t give less of a shit—looks irritated for a split-second, before schooling her face back into an easily blank expression.

“Detective Morales and I are not at liberty to discuss details of any ongoing investigations that we may or may not be a part of,” she says coolly, never breaking eye contact. “What’d you think of Rogers? You being paired up with him?”

Bucky takes another drag on the cigarette, fights the urge to itch his scalp where his hair is nearly a week unwashed. He feels twitchy, feels bad. He doesn’t want to think about those things, those details that consumed his every thought back then.

There are other things, too; darker things that lurk in the corners of his brain. Things that go hand-in-hand with memories of Steve-goddamn-Rogers.

“What’d I think?” He chews his lip. “Well, you don’t pick your parents, and you don’t pick your partner. Did they tell you that Rogers and I grew up together in Brooklyn? Yep. Small world, ain’t it? Nobody else knew him down here, obviously. He was…he was raw-boned. Edgy. Big guy, tall and built. Took about three months before I was able to get him over to the house for dinner. Around our big 419. That’s what you wanna hear about, right? Lorna Dane? Kids in the woods?”

“Yeah, sure.” Morales slides an ashtray in Bucky’s direction. “But, uh, talk about Rogers. We heard some stories. Kinda a strange guy, huh?”

Bucky laughs without humor. He doesn’t have that in him anymore. It’s funny; by all rights, it should be Rogers sitting here wearing dirty clothes and talking like an old junkie. Not him.

“Yeah. He was…he was different, that’s for sure. Steve Rogers would pick a fight with the sky if he didn’t like its shade of blue. But when I finally got him to come to the house—this is when the case was hot—the punk looks like he’s on his way to the firing squad.”

The detectives exchange looks. Bucky remembers when he had a partner to exchange wordless thoughts with.

“We understand that you worked with a Detective Rogers on the Dane case, but reports say the two of you clashed,” Morales looks at Bucky, and Bucky can see how young the kid is. Probably barely even thirty. “You had a falling out that resulted in a violent altercation at the precinct.”

Bucky’s thirty-nine, and he feels a hundred. A thousand.

“‘Clashed?’ Kid, me an’ Rogers did more than clash. Or didn’t they put that in your little file?” Bucky sneers, meanness just as real on his tongue as the tobacco and nicotine aftertastes.

Bucky closes his eyes for a moment. He tries to block the stream of memories that come pouring in when he hears that name. Steve Rogers. It’s too late, though; there are flashes of blue eyes and a nose bent from being broken, snatches of broad shoulders and big hands.

“Are you saying that you had a certain kind of relationship with your then-partner, Mr. Barnes?” Detective Carter asks, and Bucky can imagine the way she’s willing herself not to sound too interested, too eager. She almost pulls it off.

“How about we talk about what I recall about Lorna Dane,” Bucky drawls, discarding his cigarette butt in one of the detectives’ coffee mugs “And maybe you can tell me about that top secret case you’re not working right now.”

“Mr. Barnes,” Morales sounds tired, like he’s already worn out, just being in this room with Bucky for ten minutes. “Please, just cooperate with us.”

Bucky leans back even further in his seat, puts on a lazy smile that he knows used to be charming and says, “Fuck you.”

. . .

_Brooklyn, 1986_

It’s summer, sticky-hot, melted ice cream on the asphalt hot.

Bucky is 13, Steve is 12. They don’t go anywhere without the other. Bucky thinks about this, locked in the dank basement; if he and Steve weren’t joined at the hip, maybe Steve wouldn’t be down here, too. It’s Bucky’s fault, in a way.

The basement is humid, and it stinks like old milk and rancid, adult-man sweat. There is a black garbage bag in the far corner that is leaking an evil-looking liquid. The smell is overwhelming in the heat, and Steve has already thrown up a few times.

He’s flushed, his small body hunched in on itself, and Bucky is terrified.

If Steve has an asthma attack, or if he panics…no. He won’t let that happen. He’ll take it all, whatever’s coming. He can do that, for Steve.

  
It all started with one of the older kids, talking a lot of shit about some older guy who’d buy you beer if you let him take pictures of you with your clothes off. A couple of the neighborhood boys had done it, the kid said. It was no big deal.

Of course, to Steve Rogers, it was a big deal. It wasn’t right. Kids—some who were definitely younger than they were—had been preyed upon by some weirdo, and Steve couldn’t stand that. He’d silently fumed about it until Bucky had given in and suggested they try and break into the guy’s place, get evidence that they could take to the cops.

Bucky doesn’t want to think about how bad he’d fucked up. They should never have come here. Now, they’re locked in this basement, bugs crawling over their feet, with the promise of pain to come.

The guy, he looks normal enough. Bucky had seen him on the street sometimes, or down at the bodega buying cat food. He wonders how a guy who keeps kids in his basement for shits and giggles could be so fond of an animal. It doesn’t make sense; dote on a pet, fuck a kid. Torture a kid. Kill a kid, maybe. That’s what it’s looking like, anyway.

Steve is trying not to cry, and Bucky knows that he won’t. He won’t let himself, because he’s always worried about looking weak. Bucky, as he so often does, will bear it for both of them. The tears slip silently down his cheeks, hot and stinging, and he reaches in the semidarkness for Steve’s hand.

They hold tight to each other, and Bucky cries for both of them.

. . .

 _Lousiana, 2003_  


The sun rises red, with clouds that look more like orangey coughs of pesticide. The woods are dense, and cicadas whine in stereo.

“Barnes and Rogers, state CID,” Bucky says to the deputy.

The deputy leads them down a tamped down trail, likely made by the sheriff’s boys earlier.

The body is posed as though in prayer. She’s blindfolded, with a white piece of what looks like linen.

“Who found her?” Bucky asks, hands in his pockets.

“Farmer and her son.”

“Well, let’s keep them here. And tape off this road. You wanna give us your log, too?”

Without saying anything, the deputy leads Bucky and Rogers to the dark, slumped shape. Bucky can see how hard the guy is trying not to look at it, but he can’t help himself.

She can’t be older than twenty, if that, and on her head, tangled in her dyed-green hair, there is a crown of rose thorns and deer antlers. She’s tied up, propped up against the tree, just off the highway in a copse of swampy woods.

There’s scorched earth, fire-touched branches surrounding the site, like whoever did it lit as much as they could on fire. Couldn’t have thought there was even half a chance of the wet wood burning for long; not if the killer was from around here, anyway.

Hung from the trees, there are little stick contraptions that remind Bucky faintly of Cajun bird traps. It’s unsettling, which isn’t altogether special in that this whole scene is unsettling.

On the girl’s back, there’s a spiral. It’s been painted on, with a brownish-red paint that isn’t quite a match for dried blood.

“Jesus,” Bucky mutters, holding a hand over his nose and mouth. “Fuckin’ hell.”

Rogers says nothing, but his features tense and sharpen. He pulls on a pair of latex gloves from the crime scene kit, snapping them unintentionally.

It’s been—well, it’s been weird as hell, working with Rogers. The two of them grew up in Brooklyn together, but Bucky’s family moved to Louisiana the summer of junior year, and they lost touch.

Now, somehow, they both wind up as detectives in nobody-cares-parish Louisiana? Talk about a weird situation. Bucky’d never even heard that Steve was a cop, not ’til the Chief told him he’d be getting a new partner, fresh out of the NYPD’s vice squad.

“You ever see something like this?” The deputy is as far away from the body as he can be in this small area, and he’s watching the way Rogers crouches down to examine the dead girl with a mixture of nausea and affront.

“No sir,” Bucky replies. “Four years CID.”

“Them symbols,” the deputy continues “They’re satanic. They did a 20/20 on it a few years back.”

“You thinkin’ some kinda devil worshippers did this?” Bucky asks, though he knows the answer he’ll get. He’s just testing the waters. He knows all about the Satanic Panic, about how people in rural, God-with-a-capital-G-fearing areas of the Bible Belt tend to go a little nuts over these things.

“This isn’t the first time our guy’s done this,” Rogers says, walking in a slow, wide circle around the tree where the girl is posed. “He’s had practice, tying those knots, laying out this little scene for us. Any cases you can recall with similar staging at the sites?”

Bucky shakes his head, ignoring the mosquitos and flies swarming almost as thick as the humid, soupy air. He’s lived in Louisiana for awhile, now. He’s never gotten used to this muggy heat, this clingy, sweaty climate.

“None I can think of off the top of my head. We got ID on the body?” He rolls up his shirtsleeves to the elbows; it doesn’t help.

“No, sir,” the deputy says.

“We’re gonna need more men for a grid search.” Bucky paces around the tree. “Set up a parameter as wide as possible on those three roads. Post up. Take license plates of anything that passes.”

The deputy nods, then walks away. He looks glad to be relieved of standing near the body.

Bucky thumbs his radio. “I-23. “

The scratchy sound of the dispatch officer, Barton, comes in. “Go ahead, I-23.”

“We’re gonna need investigators on that 419. All that you can spare for a canvas.”

“Roger that.”

Bucky walks over to Rogers, breathing through his mouth and still tasting the sweet-rancidness of decaying flesh. The sketchpad, the one Rogers has been scribbling in all day, shows a rough render of Lorna’s body as it appears from a head-on angle. It’s executed in sharp, fast lines, and it makes Bucky feel strange to see it.

“Tell me what you see,” he says.

“Ligature marks on her wrists, ankles, and knees. Multiple shallow stab wounds to the abdomen. Hemorrhaging around the throat. Lividity at the shoulders, thighs and torso. She’d been on her back for a while; before he moved her.”

Bucky goes to take a picture, and Rogers takes out his pad. He’s kneeling on the muddy ground, obviously unconcerned about the state of his pants.

He wonders if Rogers has anyone at home to take care of those stains, or if he’ll stand over the laundry sink himself, scrubbing and bleaching.

. . .

_2011_

“That’s why they called him Van Gogh. That big sketchpad he carried around. The rest of us had those little note pads—you know the kind—and he had this big ledger. Funny, him walking door to door with it, like some kind of artist. Not a bad nickname, as far as nicknames go.”

Bucky doesn’t think about the nicknames he and Rogers used to have for each other, way back before blood and death and crime scene tape became their lives.

“You know, I’ve seen all the different types. We all fit a certain category. The bully. The charmer. The surrogate dad. The man possessed by ungovernable rage. The brain…And any of those types can be a good detective. And any of those types can be an incompetent shitfuck.”

Carter looks down at her notes, then back at Bucky. She does not blink.

“Which type were you?”

Bucky laughs sharply, but it turns into a cough.

“Oh, I was just a regular type schmuck…with a big-ass dick.”

There’s a beat, and he lights a new cigarette, and reaches for the six-pack of cheap beer on the table.

“A lot of it had to do with how they manage authority,” he continues. “It could be a burden in authority, in vigilance. Like a father’s burden. It’s too much for some men. A smart guy who’s steady is hard to find. I was alright. Better than some. But, you know, I knew how to talk to people and I was steady. Rogers?”

Bucky takes a long swig of beer, remembering how it used to be Rogers was the weird one, the one who people avoided in a room.

“Now, his NYPD files were classified or redacted, and he wasn’t big on talking. Except when you wanted him to shut up. But…he was smart. Real smart. Second week we were together, I saw where he was living. Kinda made me feel for the guy.”

. . .

_2003 - before Lorna_

Rogers opens the door, and Bucky tries not to look as dismayed as he feels, taking in the bare bones of the room. It’s empty, save for a few unpacked boxes.

The walls are white, and unadorned. A mattress sits on the floor against one wall, with e crucifix hanging above the head. There is no TV, no coffee table. Stacks of books take up one of the corners, and there are sketchpads lying around. Loose sheets of paper with all manner of drawings on them, too.

“I’d offer you a seat, but, uh…”

“Don’t mention it,” Bucky wants to flee. “I can’t stay long, anyhow.”

. . 

 _Crime_ _scene_

Bucky leads the canvass towards the body, where Rogers is still standing with his sketchpad, staring at the body.

He looks at one of the devil nets, collected for evidence, then looks up at the rest of them, still hung up in the trees.

“This is gonna happen again,” Rogers says, his voice completely toneless. “Or, it’s happened before.”

Bucky frowns. “What do you think you know?”

Rogers sighs. “It’s fantasy enactment. Ritual. Fetishization iconography. This is his vision, Barnes. Her body is a paraphiliac love map.”

“How’s that, exactly?” Bucky squints, not at all comfortable with being the one in the dark here. He wonders when the hell Rogers got so strange.

“It’s an attachment of physical lust to fantasy and practices forbidden by society,” Rogers replies.

“You get that from one of your books?” Bucky asks.

“Mhmm,” Rogers nods, walking around a little. “I did. Her knees are abraded. Rug burns on her back, cold sores, gemlike recession, bad teeth…there’s decent odds she was a prost. He might not have known her, but…this idea goes way back with him.”

Bucky tries to smile, but it feels false, mean.

“You got a chapter in one of those books on jumping to conclusions? You attach an assumption to a piece of evidence, you start to bend the narrative to support it. Prejudice yourself.”

Rogers doesn’t look at him.

“Wait and see on the ID.”

“Fine.” _Fucking prick_ , Bucky thinks.

“This kind of thing does not happen in a vacuum. I guarantee this wasn’t his first. It’s too specific.”

Bucky watches Rogers for several minutes in silence. It’s absurd, really—the two of them in suits it’s too hot for, standing next to this horrible corpse and being quiet like the schoolboys they used to be.

He’s agitated, and he wants to get out of here.

“Listen, this is, uh, a stupid time to mention this, but you gotta come to dinner. Can’t put Natasha off anymore, so you just gotta.”

Rogers says nothing for a moment. Then, he nods. “Alright.”

Bucky takes one last look at the lifeless body kneeling at the base of the tree. The spiral on her back feels like a puzzle he doesn’t want to think about, but that he knows will keep him up until he solves it.

. . .

_1986_

The guy comes back eventually, his footsteps heavy on the wooden steps. Bucky doesn’t know it now, but later he will find out that they were in that basement for three days.

Three days with just a jug of old water and a bucket to piss and shit in.

Bucky puts his arm around Steve protectively, and tries to quell the roiling fear in his stomach. He can do this, for Steve. He will.

“We’re gonna play a little game,” the guy says, and his voice makes Bucky want to throw up. It’s all smooth and thick, like he’s got fat in his throat. “One of you is gonna suck my dick, and the other one’s gonna take it in the ass.”

Bucky swallows.

“Let me—I’ll do it. Don’t touch him. Hurt me.”

“Isn’t that sweet,” the man sneers. “What, is he your boyfriend or something? Are you two a couple of little preteen faggots?”

“Bucky, no,” Steve tries to protest, but Bucky waves him off.

“Just cover your eyes, Stevie. Don’t worry, just don’t worry.”

Bucky crawls on his hands and knees over to the man, fights the urge to puke as it rises up his throat. The man undoes his belt buckle, unzips his jeans. Already, he’s hard in his boxers.

“Take it out,” he demands.

Bucky does as he’s told, and his nostrils fill with the pungent stink of unwashed cock.

“Now open your mouth, you little faggot.”

He does. He closes his eyes, feels tears prick the corners as the man begins to fuck his mouth. It’s fast and brutal, and Bucky knows he only has one chance.

He waits for a few more thrusts, waits for the sick fucker to really get into it, then he bites down as hard as he can. He tastes blood, but he keeps biting. The man screams, tries to pull him off, but it’s too late.

Bucky spits out the head of the man’s cock, bloody and gross, onto the dirty cement floor.

“Run, Steve!” he screams, and Steve hesitates. “Fucking go, Rogers! Get outta here!”

“Not without you!” Steve shouts, scrambling to grab Bucky’s hand.

“I’m gonna kill you,” the man rages, clutching his bleeding genitals. “Fuck, I’m gonna fuck you both with a serrated knife, make you so goddamn sorry…”

But Bucky doesn’t hear what it is that’ll make him and Steve so sorry. The blood is rushing in his ears, and all he sees is red.

He grabs the nearest thing from an old workbench; a tire iron, rusted and heavy.

He swings it, catching the man across the face. The iron cracks against bone, and Bucky feels sick with the sound. The man crumples to his knees, and Bucky tugs Steve’s hand.

“We gotta go, Stevie,” he chokes.

They run up the stairs, past the framed photos of old people, past the living room where the television is playing reruns of I Love Lucy. Out the door and onto the street, just two streets over from where Bucky’s parents live.

They run the whole way to the Barnes house, collapsing on the front steps. Bucky is gasping, his body aching. Steve is making sounds like a dying fish, and he doesn’t have his inhaler.

Rebecca, Bucky’s ten year old sister, opens the door.

She screams.

Bucky passes out, and when he wakes up, he’s in a hospital bed. There are two officers waiting to take his statement.

. . .

_2011_

“Mr. Rogers,” the blonde detective sits down at the table across from Steve, and immediately, he resents her.

He resents both of the young detectives in this room, mostly because they, unlike him, have not failed so utterly at their jobs. Maybe they never will.

“Lorna Dane. The ‘Occult Ritual Murder.’” He fights the urge to look at his phone. “You thank the Advertiser for that.”

“That’s right,” the other detective moves around to sit at the table, too. “When Katrina hit, we lost a lot of files, stuff that was on paper that hadn’t been entered into the databases yet. The Lorna Dane case was one of them, and we’d like to hear what you can remember about it, if it’s not any trouble.”

Steve is about to answer, some bullshit about how he doesn’t remember much, when he catches the ghost of a scent on the air.

The room smells like air freshener, the kind that’s meant to remind you of fall afternoons in Boston or whatever, but beneath its artificial crispness, Steve smells stale cigarette smoke. That, and cheap beer.

“He was here, wasn’t he?” Steve tugs at his collar, feeling choked by his sensible tie. “You had that—that fucking—sorry, I’m sorry. That’s not appropriate. But he was here. You talked to—to him. Barnes.”

The last time Steve had seen Barnes, they’d both been wearing each other’s blood and a handful of bruises, sporting black eyes, each a perfect match for the other’s dominant fist. He’s not proud of it; not the fight, not what led up to it, and certainly not the memories from those years they worked the Dane case.

A lot of sweaty, sticky nights spent poring over photos and lists and phone records and bank statements and tips, sitting at Steve’s kitchen table in their undershirts and jeans. Whiskey poured with a heavy hand, and too frequently.

Those sticky, sweaty nights often ended up with Bucky’s cock in Steve’s ass, or Steve’s in Bucky’s mouth, their fucking so dirty and rough, like they were trying to pound out all the horrible shit they saw on the job that day. Like they thought fucking hard enough would make them forget.

“We did speak to Mr. Barnes, yes,” Carter says, shuffling her notes pointlessly. It’s a stall tactic, and Steve’s tired of this whole thing already. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

He sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose; his head is pounding, and his fingers itch to curl into a fist. He wants to hit something. He doesn’t.

“No. No problem.”

The red light on the camera blinks, like an encouragement.

. . .

_2003_

The field office in Baton Rouge is large, with an open floor, littered with cubicles and computers. The receptionist waves to them both, and Bucky leads Steve through the office.

A couple of plainclothes detectives are at their desks, using the phones. Sam Wilson is sitting across from Peter Quill, who is holding a cigarette in one hand and a styrofoam cup of shitty coffee in the other. There are open files on the desk, and the detectives are all watching Rogers.

“What’d you hear?” Quill asks Wilson, who snorts wryly.

“Ask Rogers.”

Quill raises his eyebrows questioningly. “Ask Van Gogh? You know he’s IA.”

  
In Major Phillips’ office, Bucky feels young and stupid. He and Rogers are seated in two chairs that face the desk, and Phillips is seated behind the desk, rubbing his KOC ring thoughtfully.

“You never heard any shit like this before,” Bucky tells him. “She had…she had antlers.”

“Shit,” Phillips shakes his head.

“This is a real thing,” Bucky continues “This is some goddamn Halloween shit.”

“Well,” Phillips sighs heavily, the wrinkles in his face more prominent, “We’re gonna have to do a press conference.” He nods towards Rogers. “What about him, what do you think?”

Bucky thinks about it.

“Smart. Aloof. Doesn’t care about making friends. But he’s already running with it. HE’s got a real mind for it.”

Phillips doesn’t comment on that, just stares at Bucky with those black eyes.

“So you’d keep him on it?” he asks.

“Both of us,” Bucky is quick to say. “Yeah, yes sir. I would.”

Phillips nods, and his jowls quiver. “Alright. You’re still lead. Incident room is yours, and, uh, you’re doing the briefing tomorrow.”

“Yes sir,” Bucky says feelingly. “Thank you.”

He walks out of the office feeling wired. He’s lead detective on a case that could be part of something bigger.

Commander Pierce walks into the office, and Bucky says hello to him.

Pierce walks on by, though, ignoring him and saying nothing.

“Fuck that prick,” Bucky says to himself.

. . .

_2003_

The bar is small, and the lot is fairly empty. From inside his car, Steve sees a blonde girl, tall and thin, walking across the parking lot.

He waits until she’s inside, then opens the door.

  
Inside, the bar is humid, a few ceiling fans whirring overhead, blowing around the hot air rather than cooling anything down. There are sweat stains blossoming in the armpits of Steve’s shirt, but he doesn’t care.

Scanning the room, he sees a back corner table, and sitting there, the blonde from the lot. She’s with another girl, a girl who looks quite a bit younger, with dark hair.

He smiles, puts on the face he knows he used to have once upon a time—All-American and sweet.

“Evening, ladies. I was hoping to maybe ask you a few questions.”

The blonde scowls. “Aw, come on, man.”

He knows he looks like a cop, no matter how down in the filth he gets, Steve can never seem to lose that badge-gleam. Not to trained eyes, anyhow.

“You making trouble for us, sir?” The blonde has a smoky voice, low and raspy like a woman twice her age.

“I’ll get the next round,” Steve offers. “I’m just looking to get some information on a woman. Maybe you know her?”

The blonde—and Steve can see that she’s maybe in her mid-twenties—upends her beer, draining it. She slides the empty pint glass to Steve, and gestures to the brunette.

“We’ll take two large Long Island ice teas, please.”

Steve nods. “Ma’am.”

  
When he returns with the drinks, he sits down across from the girls.

“I’m Steve, by the way.”

“I’m Kitty, and this is Raven,” the tiny brunette says. She hardly looks old enough to be a junior in high school. It makes Steve’s gut churn.

“Either one of you know a woman, bout your age,” he nods at Raven, “5’8, dyed-green hair. She'd stand out in a crowd.”

Raven doesn’t bat one mascaraed lash. “What kind of tits did she have?”

Steve doesn’t flinch, either. He’s not much for flinching.

“Medium,” he tells them. “A little larger than yours. Proportion to the body is natural.”

“God, I don’t know,” Kitty says, widening her eyes. “We see a lot of girls like that around.”

"With green hair?" Steve slides a ten dollar bill out from his wallet, but doesn’t place it on the table yet.

"Well..." Kitty looks away. Clearly, she knows something. 

“Any girls like that you hadn’t seen around lately? Missing, like?”

Kitty shrugs. “People come and go. What do you want her for?”  
  
“I wouldn’t bust somebody for hooking. Or drugs.”

At the word ‘drugs’, Raven’s eyes dart to her blue-faux alligator bag. Steve clocks the tell, and he feels his pulse raise a little.

“I’m murder police,” he tells the girls.

“Somebody get killed?” Raven asks, though she still seems jumpy. “Hey, you talk funny. You ain’t from around here, huh.”

“Nah. I come from way up in New York City.”

“Somebody got killed?” Kitty asks, her voice small and young. She has freckles, and a childlike roundness to her features. Steve wonders just how young she really is.

“There’s a girl named Jean, and another named Destiny, but I saw Destiny yesterday at McDonald’s.” Raven sips her drink, leaving lipstick smudges on the glass.

“What about Jean?” Steve asks, handing the ten dollar bill to Kitty.

“She’s here,” the girl answers, snatching the money.

“Kitty, can you grab us a couple more drinks from the bar?”

She glances at Raven, who nods, then walks towards the bar. Steve leans in, lowers his voice.

“You get pills pretty easy?” he asks.

Raven’s pretty face twists in panic.

“Relax,” Steve says soothingly. “I want some.”

“Speed?” Raven raises her eyebrows.

“No,” Steve shakes his head. “Quaaludes. Anything barbital.”

“Uppers are easier to get, and they last longer.”

“Yeah, but it’s not like that.”

“What’s it like?” Raven looks skeptical.

Steve sees that Kitty is talking to the bartender.

“I don’t sleep,” he tells Raven.

  
He holds tight to that little bag of pills all the way home. 

. . .

_2003 - State Police HQ_

Bucky is groggy, but then again, he’s always groggy in the mornings. He spent too much time drinking last night, then he and Natasha fell into bed together like usual. She’s having a spat with her current beau, and Bucky’s just there to fill in the gaps.

“Prints came back,” Rogers says, not looking away from the whiteboard he’s writing on. “One Lorna Kelly Dane, aged nineteen. She’s a prost,” Rogers adds, glancing at his notebook and flipping back a few pages. “We have arrest records for her for shoplifting, solicitation and possession. Earliest one is truancy, and that’s dated from three years ago.”

The board is almost full of Rogers’ small, neat printing, the letters blocky and uniform. Bucky takes a sip of coffee, black and bitter.

“She have any family?”

Rogers turns around to face him.

“Address outside of St. Martinsville, landlord said she hadn’t lived there in almost a year, though. She’s got an ex, Alex Summers, who’s doing eight to ten in Avoyelles for bad checks. Mom’s outside of Breaux Bridge, DMV license is expired. And the coroner called.”  
.

_2003 - Coroner’s office_

“She was washed clean,” the coroner, Dr. Banner, tells them. “Not a single print on her. We got marks on the wrists and ankles, and it’s likely she was bound by half-inch rope, maybe ten, twenty hours. Evidence of vaginal intercourse. Bound upright, hadn’t eaten in a day, maybe more. Toxicology hit for lysergic acid and amphetamine.”

“Crystal and LSD,” Steve murmurs.

“How much LSD?” Barnes crosses his arms over his chest.

Steve’s tired, but that’s nothing new. He thinks about the hookers he bought from last night, and wonders if they didn’t know more than they said.

“Hard to say,” Banner frowns. “Have to wait for a mass spec.”

“So,” Barnes begins with a heavy Brooklyn drawl, “She was drugged, bound, tortured with a knife, strangled…and then posed out there?”

The coroner, a small, bespectacled man somewhere in his late forties, shrugs in apparent agreement. Steve moves towards the evidence table.

“What about this stuff?”

“Well,” Banner tells him, “The ‘crown’ for lack of a better word: rose thorns, switchgrass, wrapped around a bent branch. The horns are deer antlers. Again, no prints on anything. The symbols are painted with an acrylic basic red mixed with black. This was done with a thick gloved finger.”

“Any ideas what any of this means?” Steve asks, not holding his breath.

“I don’t know.” Banner takes his glasses off for a second, pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s all primitive. It’s like cave paintings. What could any of it mean?”

He leaves the room, and Steve bends down to eye level with the evidence.

Behind him, Bucky sighs impatiently.

“All the trouble this guy went to, seems personal,” he remarks, tapping the heel of his shoe on the linoleum.

Steve shakes his head. “Nah. I don’t think so. It’s iconic, planned. And in some ways, it was highly impersonal. Think of the blindfold.”

  
They walk back to the car, passing on the way a strip mall with broken windows, cardboard patches, and wild ivy and kudzu taking over everything. High grass has busted up through cracks in the sidewalk, and it looks like a place that time forgot. Hell of a spot for a coroner’s office.

“This place is like somebody’s memory of a town, and the memory’s fading. It’s like there was never anything here but jungle,” Steve says idly.

“Stop saying shit like that,” Barnes points accusingly at him. “It’s unprofessional.”

Steve wants to smirk.

“Oh, is that what I’m going for here?”

Barnes huffs, then drops his hand. “I just want you to stop saying weird shit, Rogers, like you smell a psycho’s fear, or you’re in someone’s faded memory of a town—just, stop.”

“Given how long it’s taken for me to reconcile my nature, I can’t figure I’d forgo it on your account, Bucky.”

The two of them stare at each other, and the old nickname and the potential for violence buzz in the air, humming with both mens’ inability to discuss any and all feelings.

“You’re a real sonofabitch, you know that?” Barnes squints at him.

“Yep,” Steve agrees.

. . 

Steve knows where to get a fix.

He didn’t think he’d be this man; the man who leaves behind undercover work with the drug squad nursing a black little habit of his own.

But, well.

You wind up in some sick fuck’s basement as a kid, watch your best friend forced to suck the guy’s dick, you might end up a little damaged.

You lose the only good thing to happen to you since your best friend moved away; find out she was pregnant, only a few weeks, so she likely didn’t know herself. Well, fuck.

You spend enough time with freaks and meth-heads and pimps, you might need a little something to take the edge off. Lately, Steve’s felt like he’s edges on all sides. He needs this.

He’s in one of the trashier districts, ducked in through the back door of a seedy strip joint, waiting on a girl with too much makeup and barely any clothes on to come back with the stuff he’s after. She’s a friend of Raven’s, the blonde from the bar.

Shooting dope in front of a drug lord to prove that you aren’t a narc may seem like a good option at the time—hell, it seems like the only option—but Steve knows now that it can’t be worth it. The way his blood bubbles, the way he’s sweating cold-hot, anticipating the sting of the needle and the warm rush that follows.

“Sure I can’t give you a freebie?” the girl, Angel, says with a lipsticked smile, unsubtly letting her eyes flick up and down Steve’s body. “I could make you feel twice as nice as the dope, baby.”

“Not today, Angel.” He tries not to let on just how much the thought of sex with an exploited minor makes his skin crawl. “But, hey, I got something else you might be able to help me with.”

She perks up, and under all the makeup, she looks a little brighter.

“What’s that?”

Steve looks around, over his shoulder and then the other instinctively, then pulls out the photo of Lorna when she was alive. He leans in and lowers his voice.

“You know a girl by the name of Lorna Dane? She ever come around here, looking for dates, anything like that?”

Angel takes the photograph, peering down at it with her mouth slightly agape.

“She lives down at the trailer park, the one just outside of town,” she says, chewing her lip. “Lotta runaways stay there. It’s cheap, and nobody gives you any hassle. Well,” she amends, “not usually. Not if you got a gun, or a big man.”

Steve thanks her, and tries not to run back to his car.

The whole way home, the little baggie of dope feels like it’s brighter than the sun in his pocket, singing high and pure against his thigh.

He’s not proud of it, but before he calls Barnes to tell him about Angel’s tip, Steve shoots some of the stuff.

He’s not proud of much at all, these days.

. . .

_2011_

“Vermilion sheriff requested assistance with the 419, cane fields outside of Erath. I’d been on the job about two, maybe three months at that point. Two previous cases were open and shut. It was January the third, 2003. My wife’s birthday—she’s deceased. Two years before that, back in ‘01. I remember.”

“Can you tell us anything else that might be relevant?”

Steve laughs.

“We’d encountered a meta-psychotic. Which I had to explain to Buck—to Barnes what a meta-psychotic was.”

“You said that Lorna Dane was found posed like she was praying? Can you be a little more specific about that?” Detective Carter asks.

Steve winces every time he thinks about her last name. He wonders if she’s any distant relation to Peggy, but doesn’t ask.

“She was—hang on, do you have a piece of scrap paper I could—? Okay, thanks.” He starts sketching on the paper, the lines flowing from his pen as easily as they had when he was staring at that body in the woods eight years ago.

In a few minutes, he’s looking down at the scene from that day, those little stick contraptions hanging from the trees, the antler crown on her head. He hadn’t realized just how clearly he remembered all the details.

He slides the drawing across the table to the two detectives, who peer down at it with interest.

“What were her wounds like?” Detective Morales taps the paper with his own pen. “Did they occur pre- or post-mortem?”

Steve isn’t dumb enough to think that this line of questioning is just a matter of ‘rebuilding files that were lost.’ He knows they’re sniffing around because they found something similar. That’s how this goes.

“She had a grand total of twelve stab wounds to the stomach. It was, if you’ll excuse my French, a fuckin’ mess. ‘Course, toxicology report showed that she was pumped full of drugs, too, so there’s a good chance she had no idea what was happening.”

Carter leans forward a little. “Drugs? What kind of drugs?”

Steve shrugs, does his little _aw shucks_ routine. “Ah, you’ll have to forgive me. Memory isn’t what it used to be. I want to say it was methamphetamine, but you’ll have to double-check with someone who worked for the medical examiner’s office back then.”

“We’ll do that,” Carter nods. “In the meantime, can you tell us what your initial thoughts were regarding the murder, the possible killer or killers?”

Killers. That’s a new one. Steve knows that Bucky never agreed with him about that, the possibility that the whole thing went deeper than they could comprehend, that the evil sprawled out like tentacles underground stretching as wide as the whole parish.

“Ma’am, I’m not sure what you want me to say,” he says easily. “This was nearly ten years ago. I think I probably spouted some freaky-sounding bull, like I was fond of doing back then. I was in a weird place.”

“And do you attribute that to your prior drug use, Mr. Rogers?” Morales asks, and he looks so wide-eyed and innocent that Steve wants to laugh.

“Sure,” he nods. “Sure, that is definitely a possibility. I saw everything through the lens of that addiction. I think I remember saying that this couldn’t be the first time the perp had killed. It was too neat, too practiced. He put her there exactly how he wanted her, no fumbles or mess. Not any mess he didn't want, anyhow.”

Steve keeps talking, telling the two detectives as little as he can in as many words as he can, all the while feeling that humming in his veins, shrill as mosquitos whining in his ear.

Not for the first time since he’s been clean, Steve feels the throb of need. He wishes he had some on him. Wishes he had his kit, the clean needles and the rubber tubing and the alcohol pads.

“Anyway, that night, the night we caught the case, wasn’t even sundown yet. Barnes decided it was a good time to invite me to dinner. Which, y’know, I have a problem with. Because I’m thinking about Barnes’ ex-wife who he still lives with, and I’m thinking about how it’s my dead wife’s birthday…and there’s nothing I can do about it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but…I”m gonna have a drink. Gonna have a little sniff.”

. . .

_2003_

Steve knocks on the door, feeling foolish. He’s carrying a cheap bouquet and bottle of wine, and wearing the same suit he wore to the crime scene earlier. The knees of his pants are dark with mud.

Barnes answers the door, takes in Steve’s appearance, and frowns.

“What the fuck?” he grabs Steve by the arm and leads him down to the car. “Get in.”

Steve gets in on the passenger’s side, blinking bleary eyes, wiping at his running nose with his shirtsleeve.

“People out here, they don’t even know the outside world exists. Might as well be living on the fucking moon,” he slurs.

“There’s all kinds of ghettos in the world, Steve.” Barnes is quietly seething in the driver’s side seat, but it’s the first time he’s used Steve’s first name since they’ve been partners.

“It’s all one ghetto, pal. Giant gutter in outer space.” Steve looks out the window, half-expecting the scenery outside to be moving.

“Today, that scene…” Barnes says, like he’s not sure he even wants to talk. “That’s the most fucked-up think I ever caught. Can I ask you something? You’re Catholic, yeah?”

Steve shakes his head. “No.”

“Well, what’s the deal with the cross in your apartment, then? Didn’t we go to mass together when we were kids?” Barnes seems annoyed now, annoyed to learn that Steve hasn’t stayed the same person as he was when they knew each other.

“It’s a form of meditation.” Steve doesn’t want to get into this right now. He’s drunk, and he’s sad, and he wants a lot of things that he shouldn’t.

“How’s that?” Barnes looks like a coiled spring, ready to pop at any second.

Steve sighs.

“I contemplate the moment in the garden. The idea of allowing your own crucifixion.”

“But you’re not Catholic, so what do you believe?”

“I believe that people shouldn’t talk about this shit at work,” Steve says in a low voice.

Barnes shifts in his seat, pointing a finger in Steve’s direction.

“Now, hold on a second. Three months we’ve been partners, not even bringing up back in Brooklyn as kids, and I get nothing from you. Today, what we’re into now, do me a courtesy, okay? I promise, I’m not trying to convert you.”

Steve leans back a little, knees digging into the glove compartment. He’s too big for this car, but so is Barnes.

“I’d consider myself a realist, but in philosophical terms, I’m what’s called a pessimist. It’s when”—

—“Fuck you, Rogers. I know what a pessimist is.”

“Means I’m bad at parties,” Steve offers, wondering if it would break his face to crack a smile. He thinks it might.

Barnes laughs at that, and it changes his whole face. He looks young, and bright. Steve thinks viciously that he’s beautiful, and that it’s not fair.

“Let me tell you, pal, you ain’t great outside of parties either.”

It’s getting muggy in the car, too hot to be sitting with the doors shut and the windows up. Steve wonders if he should just go home.

“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self aware. Nature created an aspect separated from itself. We shouldn’t exist by natural law.” He wants some dope, some booze—something to take the edge off. Something to help him sleep.

“Well, that sounds god-fucking-awful, Steve,” Bucky says matter-of-factly.

“We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self. This—this secretion of sensory experience and feeling. Programmed, with total assurance, that we’re each somebody when…when, in fact, everybody’s nobody. We all think we can be the better men, but there’s no such thing.”

Barnes inhales, then blows it out long and loud.

“I wouldn’t go around spouting that shit if I was you, Rogers. People around here don’t think that way. I don’t think that way.”

But Steve’s on a roll now, he can’t hold back the tide that’s bursting the dam.

“I think the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming. Stop reproducing. Walk hand-in-hand into extinction.” He looks out the window again, chest tight. “One last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal. “

“So what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning?” Barnes asks, but he doesn’t sound upset anymore, just genuinely curious.

“I tell myself I bear witness. The real answer is that it’s obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.”

Barnes leans back in his seat, groaning.

“What the hell happened to you, Rogers? Three months, I don’t hear a word outta you, and now…”

“You asked,” Steve reminds him. He does not say, _you know what happened to me. To us._  

“Fuck. Yeah. Yeah, and now I’m begging you to shut the hell up.”

They lapse into a silence that isn’t totally easy, but isn’t as tense as it was before. Steve stares out the windows at the isolated fields and ramshackle homes, electrical lines against the desolate valley, dotted with broken fences.

“I got a bad taste in my mouth out here, Buck.” He isn’t able to catch himself in time, using the old nickname. “Aluminum. Ash. I can smell the psychosphere.”

Barnes snorts.

“Okay. Okay. I think that’s enough heart-to-heart for tonight. Are you sober enough to come sit down with me and Natasha now?”

“I think so,” Steve lies.

“Well, no, of course not. But you can act it.” Bucky reaches for the door handle, but sits back down. “Listen,” he says carefully “When you’re in my house, I want you to chill the fuck out, alright? Don’t even mention any of that bullshit you just said to me.”

Steve laughs, then frowns. “Of course not, Barnes. Christ. I’m not some kind of maniac. Fuck’s sake.”

. . .

_Later_

“You look like shit,” Natasha says, arching her back like a cat.

“Fuck you,” Bucky retorts, though it’s without heat.

He knows he looks like shit. He barely slept last night, and what with that body they caught, he’ll likely find sleep elusive again tonight. Something about it is stirring up old memories, bad memories.

(Are there any other kind? He wonders.)

“How come you and Rogers aren’t all buddy-buddy?” She rolls over onto her stomach, wearing a pair of plain cotton underwear and and one of Bucky’s old t-shirts. “You used to be, when you were young.”

Natasha knows about—about what happened in Brooklyn. She knows that Steve was Bucky’s whole world when they were kids, and when they were teenagers, too; she knows that they only grew apart when Bucky’s parents forced it.

Sighing, Bucky sits up in bed, running a hand through his hair.

“Ah, hell, I don’t know,” he says. “I haven’t seen the guy in ten years, then he shows up here, looking like a different person, spouting all this weird bullshit…”

“You don’t think what you went through is enough to make a person a little weird?” Natasha raises both eyebrows.

Bucky sighs, already growing tired of this conversation.

“You don’t—look, you don’t get it, Tasha. It’s like—it’s like Steve went into the void and came back with the knowledge of some fucked-up shit. He talks like someone who took too much LSD in the ‘60s and fried their brain.”

“I thought he was nice,” she says thoughtfully. “Handsome, too. I’d fuck him, if I knew you didn’t want to.”

“Shut up,” Bucky tells her, feeling his shoulders tense. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Say that again, I’ll beat you so black and blue, you’ll have to wear color-correcting foundation to the precinct for a month.”

They’ve never hit each other, it’s just talk; still, Bucky knows that she’d do it. He knows he’d deserve it, too.

  
And for the record, he _does_ want to fuck Rogers. He wants it so bad, it makes his teeth ache. It’s becoming a problem.

. . .

_2003_

Over beers at a bar with sticky floors and sticky counters, country and western music playing on the jukebox, Bucky asks Rogers what he’s doing down in Louisiana. He doesn’t really expect an honest answer; he’s not sure what to make of what he does get.

Rogers’ shoulders tense, and his grip tightens on his glass. He stares hard at the wall over Bucky’s shoulder.

“Shot a man in the head four times on the job,” he says tersely. “I was working vice at the time, so they made me floating agent for the DEA. Shoulda lost my job over it.”

Bucky can’t imagine the Steve Rogers he had known, with his crusade for moral rightness, ever being angry enough to blow someone’s brains out at close range. Then again, he’d never have believed that this tall man, muscled to the last inch, could ever be skinny little Stevie from the next block.

“What’d he do?” Bucky shoves a couple of pretzels in his mouth, just to give his hands something to do.

Rogers shakes his head, frowns. He swallows several times before speaking.

“He—he shot his kid up with meth. A little baby. Fuckin’ not even a year old, this evil piece of shit pumped his baby son up with drugs, and I just…” he trails off, taking a sip of his beer.

“Shit,” Bucky breathes, fumbling for his cigarettes. “That was in NYC? Unbelievable.”

Rogers shakes his head again.

“Hell is empty,” he quotes blandly. “All the devils are here.”

Bucky tries to think of something to say to that, but finds that he can’t. Instead, he drains his glass until there’s nothing left. When he sets the empty glass down on the sticky tabletop, he feels steadier.

“So, you ever get married?” He thinks, faintly, back to his own failed marriage.

Rogers shrugs.

“Once. Didn’t work out.”

Bucky knows how that goes. He and Natasha barely lasted two years before he realized that he preferred cock and that she preferred being single. They still talk most days, and they fuck sometimes when they’re drunk and lonely and have nothing better lined up. She’s probably the only friend he’s got here.

“Me too,” he tells Rogers. “Natasha Romanoff, my Russian spitfire. She gave me hell after you left the other night, by the way. Told me I had no manners. She said she’d divorce me again if she could.”

Rogers snorts. “Yeah, I meant to ask you about that. Why did you and Natasha split up? She seems great. Did you step out on her or something?”

Bucky scoffs, offended.

“Fuck you,” he says. “Nah, it wasn’t anything like that. It just didn’t work out, is all. What about your ex?”

Rogers looks sad, looks closed-off again, and Bucky almost regrets asking the question.

“Peggy wanted me to be a man that I couldn’t ever figure out how to be,” he says, frowning at his hands where they’re resting on the table, palms down. “I think I realized that too late, could have saved her a lot of heartache. She…there was a drunk driver. She didn’t make it.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say; he’s finding himself at a loss for words more often than ever, being partnered with Rogers. He’s not sure what that means, whether it says more about Rogers or about him.

“I’m sorry,” he says simply.

“Me too,” Steve replies. “She was three weeks pregnant. Neither of us knew.”  
  
 There’s a silence that stretches long and deep, echoing and cavernous between them. It is filled with the strains of George Strait on the jukebox and a few other patrons hassling each other over at the bar.

“We got any new leads on the Dane case?” Bucky asks, just to hear some noise. He fiddles with a paper napkin, watching Rogers out of the corner of his eye.

“Found out she lived in the New Day trailer park over on the other side of town. Probably got some neighbors we could talk to.”

Bucky nods. “Good. That’s good.”

They pay their tab and head out, each in separate directions.

. . .

_The next day_

There’s a woman on the porch of the trailer nearest to Lorna’s. Steve takes down her name as Aurora, but that’s not right. Sounds like that, though.

“Ma’am, was there anything out of the ordinary between 10 and 1 AM? Out back?” He shifts his weight from foot to foot. Barnes is a few trailers away, talking to a couple of girls who look like they might be prostitutes.

“No, no,” not-Aurora says. “But, uh, sometimes they dove hunt back there. They find a woman?”

. .

They’re passing the lawn of an old man, grizzled and dirty.

“Was it that Fontenot girl?” he asks, raising the filthy brim of his hat.

“Why would you ask that?” Steve stops in his tracks.

“Don’t know,” the man shrugs. “Went missin’ round here years back. Last time something happened, just thought maybe it was her.”

“How was she, this girl?” Barnes interjects, honing in like a wolf who’s scented a rabbit.

“Don’t know that,” the man says.

“Do you know where the family lives?” Barnes asks, whipping out his police pad.

“They had a place, couple streets down.” The man shakes his head, and a few flies buzz around him. “They moved after, of course.”

.

The minister tells them about some dead cats that were nailed to the church door, something they thought might have been a hate crime, due to the large congregation of African-Americans.

Steve shows him his sketches of the marks on Lorna’s back.

He doesn’t recognize it.

When he’s shown the stick ornaments that were hanging in the tree, he says he learned how to make bird traps like that from his grandmother.

Devil nets, he calls them. His old aunty told him that you were supposed to put ‘em near the bed, catch the devil before he gets too close.

. . .

_2011_

“Listen boys, I’m gonna have to call time-out,” Bucky says to the detectives. “Gotta make a beer run.”

Detective Carter raises a hand. “Why don’t you hold off on that for awhile.”

“Alright, why doesn’t one of you go get it, then?” Bucky asks, reaching for another cigarette.

“We really don’t want to do that,” Detective Morales says apologetically.

“Why? Because it’s suppose to be admissible? Huh? You wanna pick my brain. You work a room, you buy a man a cheeseburger and a Coke, don’tcha?”

He puts some money on the table, dead-eyeing the two detectives. Your move, he thinks.

“I’ll take a sixer of Old Milwaukee or Lone Star, nothing snooty,” he says.

“Why is this so important to you all of a sudden?” Carter asks, the muscles in her jaw working.

“Because,” Bucky tells her, “It’s Thursday and it’s past noon. Thursday is one of my days off. On my days off, I start drinking at noon. You don’t get to interrupt that.”

He blows the bill across the table to Morales, who reluctantly gets up.

“I’d appreciate a little hustle up on that,” he tells the detective.

. . .

_2003 - Press Conference_

“Yesterday, at approximately 6 AM, civilians came across the body of a female in a sugar cane field outside of Erath.” Phillips is especially rigid today, looking constipated in the extreme. “Now, this person, we believe, was murdered. We are not yet in the position to release the identity of the victim, or to offer details of the crime. Our investigators,” he gestures to Barnes and Steve, “Have several leads, and hopefully will have a suspect for you in custody soon.”

.

_Avoyelles Correctional Center_

“Let’s talk about your ex, Alex. Lorna Dane.” Bucky slides into the seat across from Summers, looking like he wants to start throwing punches.

“You wanna talk about Lori?” Summers sneers. “What’s that bitch said I done now?”

“We’re just curious if you knew what she’s been up to, maybe where she’s living,” Rogers cuts in, pen poised against his sketchpad’s latest fresh page.

“Nope,” Summers says, popping the ‘p’. “Got our divorce papers pushed through after I’d been in here about a year. I don’t blame the cunt.”

“She got a habit?” Bucky cocks his head.

Summers laughs, and Bucky hates him.

“A few,” he says. “Weed, meth, juice—you name it, she’d do it.”

Bucky taps his foot a few times under the table. He tries to think about things to calm himself down. He doesn’t need to be this wound up right now.

“How did you two meet?” he asks.

“Grew up together,” Summers replies. “Dropped out the same time. Hitched up way too quick. You know how it is, you want a wife but only half the time.”

Bucky makes himself nod.

“Why’re you saying you haven't heard from her?” Rogers asks, looking at some notes a few pages back in his book. “I have it on record that she called up for you not too long ago.”

Summers looks uncomfortable, eyes darting around the room. “I mean, she couldn’t help me anyway, not when she’s all fucked up.”

“Y’know, that’s exactly the kind of thing we do wanna know about, Alex,” Rogers asks, and there’s a hard glitter to his eyes, now.

Summers exhales, giving up.

“Oh, alright. I need some scratch for my store, and Lori owes me money. She ain’t got no fuckin’ phone, so…got a number to her friend, Moira, got her to call me back, and she ain’t make no fuckin’ sense.”

“We need Moira’s full name and phone number,” Bucky says, handing Summers a paper to write on.

“What do you mean, she didn’t make sense?” Rogers asks, leaning forward a little, elbows on the table. He’s a big enough man that Summers leans back a little, instinctively.

“Like she could duck hunt with a rake,” he says, then rolls his eyes at Rogers’ blank look. “Means she was high, man, yeah? Talkin’ bout she’s gonna become a nun or some shit.”

“Why a nun?” Rogers is writing that down, too, no doubt.

“Don’t know, man,” Summers shakes his head. He has a poorly executed tattoo of a skull with flames around it on the side of his neck. “She was high. Fucked up. Talking about ‘she met a king.’ Shit. Anyway…”

He slides the paper back towards Bucky, having written down Moira MacTaggert’s name and address.

“I don’t need no snitch jacket up in here,” he says warily.

Bucky laughs, real and sharp.

“Give me a break,” he chuckles. “This is Avoyelles. It’s a goddamn day camp. Spend some time in Angola.” He nods at Summers’ Aryan tattoos. “Surprised you even got Aryan Nation here.”

“What’d Lori do?” Summers asks.

“Lori’s dead,” Rogers says casually, as if he were commenting on the weather, or the football scores.

. . .

 _2011_  


There’s a six-pack of beer in front of Bucky, now, along with his ash mug and cigarettes. He pops a can and guzzles half of it, then pauses to light a cigarette.

“Thank you,” he nods at Morales. “We almost had a moment there. So, you wanna talk the whole case through, or just the end?”

“Whole story from your end, if you don’t mind,” Carter says. “Like we said, Katrina destroyed the files.”

Bucky smirks around his cigarette.

“What you didn’t say is that this is about something else. Something new, that one in Lake Charles, maybe?”

“Why do you say that?” Carter asks, and Bucky notes that she’s pulled her hair into a ponytail at some point. It makes her look even younger.

“Got the details out of the paper,” he replies.

“You know anything about that? About Lake Charles?” Morales asks, still no good at disguising how eager he really is.

“Lemme see what you got,” Bucky sucks at the cig, smoke filling his lungs. He blows it up toward the ceiling again. “Jog my memory, kids.”

“Let’s hear your story first,” Carter says, not budging an inch. She’s tough, and Bucky can appreciate that. “Let’s see how it fits with what we’ve got.”

“Your dime, boss,” Bucky shrugs.

“Tell me, Barnes,” Morales starts. “What about that dinner you mentioned? Where Rogers turned up drunk.”

. . .

“Oh, god. That dinner.” Steve rubs a hand over his face. “That fuckin’ dinner. That was a bit later. I brought flowers, like a dumbass. I think I read that somewhere, or I thought I did. That you bring flowers to dinner.”

. . .

_2003 - Barnes’ house_

“Well, uh, Steve, it’s nice to finally meet you. James mentioned that you two were friends as kids. Sorry it took so long.”

Natasha is beautiful; a petite redhead with an unflinching stare. Steve tries not to look at her cleavage, and mostly succeeds.

“I tried to tell her you ain’t big on socializing,” Barnes says to Steve.

“I told him, ‘Your life’s in this man’s hands, right?’ Of course you should come over.” Natasha looks like this is the most obvious thing in the world.

“Well, it’s not that dramatic, Tasha. I’ve never even fired my gun.” Barnes half-laughs.

“Have you?” Natasha turns to Steve. “Fired your gun?”

“Tasha!”

“It’s fine.” Steve looks at his plate. “Yeah,” he answers truthfully, still too drunk not to.

“You shoot someone?” Natasha asks.

“Yeah.”

“You grew up in Brooklyn, with James?”

“Mhmm, in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Grew up there, stayed there. Moved down here not a year ago.” Steve replies, wondering what he should do with his hands.

“What kind of work did you do back up in New York?” Natasha sips her wine.

“Narc, mostly.” Steve wants to leave, but he doesn’t know how to make himself get up. “I was on robbery squad in the seven-five until ’99.”

“You’re not married?” Natasha asks, ignoring the glare Barnes shoots her. “James and I were married, but not anymore. Now, we’re just friends. Platonic life partners,” she laughs, and it’s a pretty laugh.

“I was once,” Steve tells her. “Not anymore.”

. . .

_2011_

“I haven’t talked to Barnes in seven years,” Steve tells the detectives.

They share a glance, and Steve doesn’t miss it.

“Look, however we… He was a good detective, okay? It doesn’t matter how we ended, I can say that because it’s the truth. I don’t hold grudges, that shit will eat you up inside.”

He realizes, suddenly, that he has gotten off-topic.

“Why am I talking about that damn dinner? You wanted to walk through the Dane case, find.”

He drops the file on the desk.

“This other stuff, what’s going on?” He feels suddenly like this has all been a ruse.

“Sorry,” Carter says, sounding sincere. “We just heard some stories. About you, about him. Wanna hear about your process, and his.”

“Process,” Steve repeats. “Right.”

“Your victim was Lorna Dane. You checked on Marie Fontenot, though. Why? Missing girl, five years gone, report made in error.” Carter doesn’t blink.

“She had an uncle who lived nearby. And…we’ll call it intuition,” Steve tells her.

“Intuition,” Morales repeats skeptically.

. . .

_2003 - Fontenot house_

“Sometimes he’s more responsive. I’d like to help,” Mrs. Fontenot, a small woman with wide, watery eyes ushers them inside.

Marie’s uncle, the former LSU pitcher, is sprawled on the couch looking like a sack of potatoes. Barnes shakes his hand.

“We met when you were pitching,” he says. “I was visiting Skip Hayes, I played for USL. Thing of beauty, man, watching you throw.”

Mrs. Fontenot nudges her son. “Johnny, this man’s a detective. The police.”

“He talks to me like I’m a child,” Johnny complains. Steve looks away.

“I’m actually sorry, uh, we wanted to ask about your niece, Marie.”

Mrs. Fontenot looks heavenward, and her eyes well up.

“How much could she put on one family, I ask the Lord. We tried to get by.”

“Did you know Marie’s birth father?” Steve asks.

“Victor Creed,” Mrs. Fontenot replies. “Victor Creed was her daddy.”

“We’re here asking because we heard that Marie ran off with him, and that she wasn’t really missing.” Barnes cracks his knuckles twice out of habit.

“That’s what her momma said.”

“Anybody heard from Victor? Anybody know where he’s at, maybe?”

Mrs. Fontenot shakes her head.

“Last thing, sorry,” Barnes looks apologetic, and Steve knows he should try to. “Do you know where Marie’s momma is now?”

.

The back yard is a dump.

“She married another man,” Mrs. Fontenot tells them. “Not the one she was with when Marie… She was in Vegas, last we heard.”

The yard is full of overgrown plants, weeds and kudzu. There’s a heap of junk in one spot, and an old rusted car on cinderblocks.

“Marie must have loved it here,” Barnes lies through his teeth. Steve’s impressed. “All this for her.”

There’s a rusted swing set, and what maybe once was a sandbox. It’s the bleakest yard Steve’s seen in a long time.

“Johnny loved her so much,” Mrs. Fontenot says, voice quavering. “We weren’t—we never were her legal guardians, but she played here all the time. More than her momma’s.”

Steve wanders off, spotting a darkly lit shed at the back of the yard. He walks towards it.

“What is it John has, if you don’t mind my asking?” Steve hears Barnes say.

“All they ever told us was a cerebral event,” Mrs. Fontenot says.

Steve sticks his head in the shed, and it doesn’t take long for his eyes to land on something he recognizes.

“Bucky,” he calls over his shoulder, forgetting to call him ‘Barnes.’ “Get over here.”

Barnes is suddenly right behind him.

“What is it?”

“Inside, on the floor, to the right.” Steve tells him.

It’s a devil net, like the ones from the crime scene.

  
When they’re filing it into an Evidence bag, Mrs. Fontenot pulls her sweater tight around herself.

“I don’t know what that is. I haven’t looked in that shed since the police first came.”

. . .

_2011_

“Bet you wanna hear about the hero shit, huh? That place where we carried the kids out.” Bucky says, cracking open his fourth beer.

“Eventually, sure,” Carter says.

“So what’s she look like? The one in Lake Charles?” Bucky asks, and he has to work to conceal his surprise when Morales gets up and shuts the shades while Carter flops a file down on the table in front of him.

“Can you tell us anything about that, Mr. Barnes?”

The first photo in the file is a naked woman, youngish, with antlers tied to her head. She’s strung up under a boardwalk by ropes.

“Well, it looks a lot like the one from ’03. You knew that already, though.” He doesn’t like this game they’re playing with him, but he’s too tired and broken not to play. He still wants to solve the puzzle, even now.

“Di you have any specifics consistent with the ’03 case, details that weren’t public knowledge?” Morales asks.

“You were off the grid for a couple of years,” Carter adds. “Show up a year ago, in 2010.”

“My question is”—but Bucky doesn’t let Morales finish.

—“How could it be him? If we already caught him in ’03. How indeed, detectives.” He sips his beer, draining it. “How indeed.”

“I figured you’d be the one to know,” Carter says.

Bucky pulls a flask from his pocket, the one he fills with the stuff that could peel paint off a barn with just the fumes. He takes a swig, feels it burn through to his gullet.

 

“Well, then start asking the right fuckin’ questions.”

 

 


	2. Seeing Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 2003, Steve and Bucky start looking for answers about Lorna Dane. 
> 
> In 2011, Detectives Carter and Morales are asking a lot of questions.

_2011_   
  


“Back then, I didn’t sleep. I’d lie there in the dark, eyes wide open. I thought about Steve.” Bucky exhales a cloud of smoke. “I know that ain’t what you people want to hear about, but it’s the truth.”

He thought about Rogers a hell of a lot in those days; more than he does now, even. And that’s saying something.

“Who knows why we choose the ones we do?” He stares into the eye of the camera. “Some just have your name on them. Like a bullet. Or a nail in the road.”

“Mr. Barnes, who else did you speak to regarding Lorna Dane?” Detective Carter, all business, looks like she’s two seconds away from slapping answers out of him.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, nodding at the four empty cans in front of him. “I drift when I have a few. That’s how come I like to drink alone.”

Neither detectives says anything, does anything; they just sit there, unblinking. Waiting.

“Still won’t tell me about the new one?” Bucky tries one more time. He sighs. “Alright. None of my business. You don’t wanna fill me in, that’s fine.” He locks eyes with the younger detective, Morales. “None of my business, you tell me you lost most of our old files in a basement flood…”

. . .

_2003_

Lorna Dane’s mother lives in a dilapidated bungalow, its small yard a tangle of knee-high weeds and debris. Cardboard and newspaper cover one of the front windows, and Steve thinks it’s no wonder these people don’t value their lives. Look where they come from. Life doesn’t count for much around here.

He keeps this thought, and any others like it that he may have, to himself. He doesn’t like the way it is between him and Barnes. It feels…wrong, somehow. Not being bright and open and unafraid around him.

The two of them exit the car, and make their way through the snarls of unkempt plants up to the moldering front porch. The front door is plywood, warped and cheap under Steve’s knuckles.

A woman answers, short and stone-faced, with her thin, grey hair pulled up in a greasy bun. She’s wearing a housedress, shapeless and colorless, featuring the ghost of something that maybe once was a pattern. She squints up at Barnes and Steve, like the daylight hurts her eyes.

“Help you boys with something?”

.

Inside the house is no better than outside, and Steve looks to Barnes for a signal. Who should be the one to break the news. He doesn’t think it should be him; once upon a time, he’d used to have a knack for being kind, being gentle. He’s lost that, at least a hundred times over.

“We’re sorry to have to tell you this, ma’am,” and damn, if Bucky doesn’t look sorry “But your daughter, Lorna Dane, was found in a cane field. She was deceased.”

The woman, Lorna’s mother Suzanna, starts to cry. It’s ugly and raw, and Steve looks away. He hasn’t cried in a long time, not even when his own ma went.

There’s an old television set in one corner, the kind with a wooden box around the whole thing, the screen like a bubble curving outward from the box. There are little knobs on the front. In another corner, there’s a votive kneeler placed in front of a statue of Christ and the Madonna. A few seven-day candles are lit, in various stages of burning. A cast iron stove, makeshift chimney with ash gathered thick as dirt beneath it. On a single shelf, family photographs sit, a film of dust visible even from the ancient sofa on which the two of them are sitting.

“As far as helping us find out what happened to your daughter, Mrs. Lewis,” Bucky says gently. “Maybe you could remember the last time you saw her? Lorna?”

Suzanna dabs at her eyes with a dirty rag, and Steve tries not to grimace.

“It’d be…well, let’s see. Near on a month, I think? Last time. She brought me some supper.”

Steve folds his hands. “She call since then?”

“I—I haven’t got a phone,” Suzanna whimpers. She turns to the kneeler, lifts her eyes to the portraits above it. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, what else do you want?” She chokes on her cry.

The two of them sit and watch her break down again for a few minutes, and then gather herself back up. Barnes is glancing at Steve uncomfortably, but Steve is too busy clocking details of the house.

Soot stains the low ceiling. It leaves marks on old newspapers strewn around the floor; a fire hazard. One of the photos in the row on the shelf features a young girl with reddish-blonde hair who must be Lorna Dane, wearing an inscrutable expression. In one photo, she’s about twelve, and a man is standing behind her. Half his face is in shadow, and the effect is jarring. Steve doesn’t like it, though he’s not sure why yet.

“Mrs. Lewis…how about Lorna’s father? Did she have a relationship with him?” he asks carefully, probing.

“Him?” Suzanna barks, sitting up straighter. “Why? What did she say?”

“No, Mrs. Lewis, we’re asking if he’s around, if…if he and Lorna were close,” Bucky clarifies quickly, shooting Steve a brief annoyed look.

“Why wouldn’t a father bathe his child?” Suzanna asks, voice beginning to climb into hysteric territory.

Steve catches Bucky’s eye, and they trade looks.

“Is your husband here, ma’am? Can we talk with him?”

Suzanna becomes solemn, shaking her head and clenching her jaw. Her eyes are watery blue, weak and bleary.

“He died on the road. Drove a truck, rolled over when he took an exit ramp too fast. Outside of Rowan, Oklahoma. May 11th, 1994.” She sounds strangely proud of this, as though dying in a wreck on the highway off-ramp is a hero’s death.

“What about the last time you saw Lorna?” Steve asks, on edge now. “What was she like—how’d she seem, I mean?”

The bedraggled woman across from them looks blankly at him for a second before answering.

“She’s…she’s had a little trouble, lately. But—I thought there’d be time for her. Time to—she said she’d started going to church, like. Said she’d been talking to a priest…” She trails off, choking wetly.

“Did she have any, uh, specific reason for seeing you, last time she came here?” Bucky is clearly losing his patience, if the way he’s leaning forward and fidgeting is anything to go by.

“No,” answers Suzanna. “No, she said she just hand’t been by in awhile. Brought me spaghetti…she knows I don’t have any money to give her, if that’s what you mean.”

Steve thinks back, for a moment, about the little girl’s report he had read in the file. The green-eared spaghetti monster who had chased her through the woods. Word association, maybe.

“How about her ex, Alex Summers?” Barnes tries.

“Him? He’s in prison.”  
“You get along with him?”

Suzanna sighs, and it turns into a painful, wet cough.

“They grew up together. Always want more, you know, kids…How do you keep them from wanting what’s bad for them? Why’d the Lord make people this way, that we can only want what hurts us?”

Steve looks at his partner, and they silently agree to give the woman some space in her desperation.

After a few moments have passed, Barnes takes the lead again.

“Did she seem to be doing alright, though? Last time you saw her?”

“She seemed…she seemed alright, yes. A little happier. More positive, I think. I was so glad she’d been talking to a priest.”

Suddenly, Suzanna clutches her head, cringing as if in the throws of a terrible migraine. She groans, low and animalistic. Barnes to her side, looking concerned.

“Mrs. Lewis?”

“…There are…storms in my head.”

Steve just watches, not moving, not speaking. He doesn’t open himself to feel anything in these types of situations; it’s not safe. He isn’t allowed.

“I worked at a dry-cleaners twenty years.” Suzanna holds out her hands. “I had to handle all these chemicals for such a long time. That’s what’s wrong with my nails.”

The nails in question are yellow and gnarled, fungal. The ends are soft and rotted off, and Steve swallows the rising bile and fights his gag reflex.

.

They’re in the car, now, southbound and heading back to HQ. Bucky is thinking about his mom, cozy and well-groomed, living in Rotunda, Florida now with his dad. They’re both happy, don’t have anything to worry about.

“You remember my ma at all?” he asks, unable to hold back. “Always making food for us, trying to keep us outta trouble.”

Rogers doesn’t say anything, but for some reason, Bucky wants to try right now.

“Your ma still alive?”   
  
“No.”

And it’s like ice water to the face, that revelation—not even considering the toneless voice it was given in—and Bucky’s heart aches once in his chest. Like a pang.

“Shit.” He checks the exit signs, makes sure they’re still on track. “I’m real sorry, pal. What happened?”

Rogers looks out the window.

“Cancer. Couple years ago, right before Peggy and I got married. It was a kindness, I think.” He closes his eyes, leaning back against the headrest. “That she never had to know what happened to Peggy. To me.”

Bucky says nothing else, biting the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood.

. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“My parents?” Steve shakes his head, smoothes his suit jacket. “Not much of a story there. My dad was a Sergeant in the 104th in Vietnam. He died when I was real small. My ma was a good woman, first generation Irish. She passed away of cancer in ’98.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Detective Carter tells him politely. “What did you know about Barnes’ parents?”

“They moved to Florida at some point, don’t know exactly when. Before I came down here, though. They were…they were good people, from what I remember as a kid. Loved Buck—Barnes. Loved me, just for being his friend.”

Morales checks the timer on the camera, then sits back down.

“We were made aware of an incident in your files, the case from ’86? Are you willing to speak about that?”

Steve smacks his hand down on the table, hard. It stings across his palm, throbbing.

“No.” He shakes his head, more times than is necessary. “No, no. You don’t need to drag that shit out into the daylight. It doesn’t need to be looked at under a microscope.”

Carter nods, but she looks disappointed. Steve frowns, thinking of Bucky.

“And I don’t want you people asking him about it, either. You got that?” He points a finger at the two detectives, glaring fire. “That shit is ugly, uglier than anyone needs reminding of. You don’t get to do that to him, or to me.”  
  
“Understood, Mr. Rogers.”

. . .  
  


_1987_   
  


It’s been a year since the incident, and Steve and Bucky are never apart. They come home from school, and stay in. They don’t hang around with other kids. It’s not natural, but Bucky’s folks and Steve’s ma, they don’t mind.

After everything that happened, after the court case and the witness stand and all the therapy with soft-spoken adults holding clipboards, the world seems shaky. Uneven ground. Steve needs to hold onto something for balance, and that something has always been Bucky.

  
One night, they’re in Steve’s bedroom, back to back in his bed with the lights out, but something isn’t right. Steve hears a soft sound, feels Bucky trembling against him.

He turns over, taps his friend on the shoulder.

“What is it, whatsamatter Buck?”

 _Sniff. Gasp._ “Leave it alone, Steve.”

“Just tell me,” Steve pleads.

Bucky rolls over so he’s facing Steve, and the air is tense and buzzing now between them. Steve feels like he might be sick.

“Remember what he—what the guy said? About me?” Bucky’s voice is small, so small. It hurts to hear it.

“Hold on…you mean, like, when he called you a f-….you know. The other f word.” Steve is grateful for the darkness, hiding the uncertainty and the hot shame creeping across his face.

“He called me a faggot.” Bucky spits the word, and it hangs in the air, foul and hateful. “How did he know, Stevie? How could he know that?”

And the sobbing begins again, Steve left reeling with the weight of his friend’s confession. He doesn't know what to think, doesn’t know what to say.

He knows that Bucky won’t believe it if he says him too, even though it’s true. Ever since two summers ago, when Bucky started to grow taller and broader, Steve noticed in a very specific way. He had looked, and then kept looking.

He says nothing, just reaches out and grabs on, pulling Bucky into his skinny arms so he can cry in safety.

“You’re allowed to love whoever you want, Buck,” Steve whispers, stroking Bucky’s hair as he sobs. “He didn’t know that, he was just being nasty. You’re not bad. You’re not.”

“You promise, Stevie?” Bucky’s voice is muffled in the fabric of Steve’s shirt. “You swear?”

Steve presses his lips to the top of his friend’s hair.

“I promise, Buck.” He says it over and over, until Bucky falls asleep. “You’re not bad. I promise.”

  
. . .  
  


_2003_   
  


“We’re doing this wrong,” Rogers says in the car, shutting his eyes hard against the light.

They just spoke to an old friend of Lorna’s, a heavyset woman working behind the counter at a gas station. She’d been high, that much was obvious. She alluded to the fact that Lorna may have been molested by her dad, pinging Bucky’s radar for the second time today.

The first time had been when Suzanna Lewis had her little outburst about it.

“That your expert opinion, Rogers?” Bucky drawls, affecting his old neighborhood accent a little heavier.

“We’re trying to learn more about Lorna, but we should be trying to learn more about her killer,” Rogers says, sounding peeved.

“Well, yeah,” Bucky rolls his eyes. “But we ain't got jack shit to go on. No evidence. No DNA. No good tips…”

“Hits up prostitutes, self-hating,” Steve rattles off a list of things that Bucky realizes he means as a profile of Lorna’s killer. “Artistic. Possibly knowledgable in taxidermy. Religiously inclined.”

Bucky snorts. “Every person within a thousand miles of here is religiously inclined, Steve. Do better than that.”

“…Unless…was he mocking?” Steve seems to be talking more to himself than to Bucky. It’s irksome.

“Listen, I can appreciate what you’re trying to add, here,” he tries, but gets interrupted.

“She sounds sad, Bucky. A tired, ripped-up person on her last legs. That’s what made her a good target for our guy. It wasn’t personal, he’d be used to hunting women of her…profession. We should be on that, put Wilson and Quill on victim background.”

Bucky is losing his patience with this, until he realizes that it isn’t all that different from the Steve Rogers he used to know. As a kid, Steve was always like a dog with a bone. He would stew over things, fussing and brooding, until he’d worked them out—or, in most cases, gotten a black eye or a busted lip.

This realization hits him hard and swift, taking the wind out of his constant irritation with Rogers. The ire drains out of him, leaving him boneless and tired behind the wheel of the car.

“Ninety-five percent of murders are committed by someone the victim knows, Steve,” he says tiredly, though he knows there’s no point.

“Oh, now I’m Steve, not just Rogers?”

Bucky scowls at the road in front of them. “Fuck you,” he mumbles. “You call me Bucky, I get to call you Steve.”

Steve says nothing, but his silence seems pleased rather than tense. Bucky lets his shoulders relax.  
  


. . .  
  


_2011_

“You’re looking for a narrative,” Steve explains. “That’s the job. You’re just trying to find the story that fits. Crime scene protocols. Interrogating potential witnesses. Parceling evidence. Talking to people. Talking to everybody. Establishing a timeline. Building a story…Days. Weeks. That’s still how it’s done, right? You talk to people.”

The two detectives across the table nod noncommittally.

“I was never good at that part,” Steve tells them honestly. “I know that Barnes is…well, he’s different. Not like how he was when we worked together. Trust me when I tell you that he was the one with the people skills.”

Carter and Morales share a look that Steve pretends not to see or understand.

  
. . .

_2003_   
  


The strip club is empty, save for two or three men nursing warm beers or eating messy chicken wings at the small, circular tables.

The manager, a man in his mid-forties with a name Bucky can’t be bothered to remember—and that’s fine, Steve’s likely written it down—is speaking to them now while looking at a photocopy of Lorna’s mugshot from her most recent arrest.

“Yep, that’s Lorna,” he says. “Gave her a couple of day shifts, but she only showed up for one. She wasn’t pretty enough to put up with that shit.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky sees the way Steve is scrutinizing the man’s face as he hands back the photocopy. Sees how his eyes narrow.

. 

_Later that day - HQ_   
  


When they return to headquarters, Bucky and Steve run into Cain Marko and his partner.

“What’d you find out?” Bucky asks.

“Landlord said she moved out a year ago,” the partner says. “Lost the deposit. Never heard from her. Neighbors check out. Only ones remembered here said she used to come home in the mornings a lot.”

Both men’s eyes are glazed, and they’re displaying the barest physical signs of inebriation. Bucky is chanting in his head, _don’t say anything, Steve. Don’t fucking say it, don’t say it…_

“You two canvas the bars pretty heavy?” Steve asks easily, eyeing the two men.

 _You had to fucking say it,_ Bucky’s inner voice is as tired as he feels.

“Up your ass, Rogers. Do your own legwork, you fuckin’ rat faggot,” sneers Marko.

Bucky’s already tensing up; he knows what’s coming, knows how Steve will react.

“What’d you call me?” Steve is gazing coolly at Marko, his posture still relaxed.

“That’s what’s going on here, right?” Marko turns in his seat, the metal groaning under his substantial weight. “Pretty boy here’s working CID for the Feds. Probably sucking a lotta dick, too.”

Steve gets in Marko’s face, one finger dangerously close to the man’s eye.

“One time. Say it again, shitfuck.”

Marko lunges at Steve, who side-steps gracefully, smacking the back of Marko’s head hard. Bucky and Phillips are up off their chairs, getting between the two men and shoving them apart.

“What the ever-loving hell is this?!” Phillips shouts.

Bucky turns to Marko. “Goddammit, Cain. Go the fuck home.”

He’s never liked Cain Marko; a large, mean, stupid man who most people will say bought his way onto the force with his stepmother’s money. They wouldn’t be wrong, either. Bucky looks at Steve, who’s staring at Marko with so much hate in his eyes, he’s nearly unrecognizable.

No one likes matching stares with Steve for very long, Bucky’s noticed. Even he tends to look away first, most times.

“New kid likes talkin’ out the side of his mouth,” Marko mutters.

Phillips stays, awaiting some kind of explanation or apology, when the three of them are approached by Wilson and Quill.

“Got a couple of hits from working girls, nothing special,” Quill informs them. “Nobody close to her, but a few names recognized her as an occasional.”

“Like she tricked only every so often,” Wilson adds. “Shows up at a couple truck stops when she needs cash, typical behavior for a hardcore user. Got the names of the truck stops for you.”

“Thanks,” Bucky nods, taking the papers.

“What about you two shits?” Phillips turns his evil eye on Steve and Bucky. “You get anything today?”  
  


Bucky hates feeling like he’s failed, and he knows Steve does, too. They look at each other, then look away.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“We had a few days like that,” Bucky says, remembering. “We asked around, talked to other working girls, talked to her employers…sometimes you just keep hitting walls, or ghost leads. Leads that don’t go anywhere.”

. . .  
  


_2003_   
  


Steve wakes in his apartment, early morning. The windows are shut, but it’s gotten hot overnight. He’s damp with sweat, and when he peels off the undershirt he slept in, it clings to his wet skin.

The crucifix is on the wall still, the only thing of his mother’s that he took with him. He hasn’t bothered furnishing the place, because why should he? He gets no joy from material things anymore, or at least, that’s what he’s told himself for so long. Hoping he might start believing it.

He washes his face in the sink, looking up as though expecting to see his reflection in a mirror, where of course there isn’t one. He doesn’t want to see how bloodshot his eyes are, how sunken his cheeks might get. He doesn’t want to see the muscles or the scars or the face of a fucking liar who was never good enough.

He wonders if Bucky still sleeps with Natasha, if they still fuck.

He remembers what Bucky confessed to him in the dark, all those years ago. Wonders if it’s still true.

It is for him, at least. He doesn’t think that’s the sort of thing you change your mind about.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“Days of nothing…that’s what it’s like, right? You work cases…” Bucky is picking at the skin around his thumb. It’s beginning to bleed. “You talk, you listen, look for something to break. Days of searching, like lost dogs.”

“You were married for two years, to Natasha Romanoff, the current District Attorney?” Detective Carter looks up from her file, catching Bucky’s eye and waiting for confirmation.

“Yeah.” He looks away. “Just married once. Never married again, because, well. You know why, I would imagine. Probably for the best. I can be…hard on people.”

He puts his cigarette out, thinking, sipping his beer. In an odd moment of openness, he finds himself telling the detectives some personal truths that he’s sure he’ll regret at a later time.

“I get angry,” he says, returning to the ragged skin of his cuticle. “I don’t mean to, but…and I’m not good for other people. Like, it’s not good for them to be around me for long. I wear them down. Bad things happen, they become unhappy. I don’t mean for it to be like that, but that’s just how it is. Can’t say the job made me this way, more like me being this way made me right for the job. It’s what made Steve right for the job, too, most likely.” It’s what made Steve right for me, he doesn’t say.

The camera blinks silently, red flashing light.

“It’s better now,” he continues. “I live in a little room out in the country, tending bar four nights a week. In between, I drink, and there’s nobody around to make me stop. Which is—which is good, because I understand who I am. I understand who I am, and there’s a victory in that.”

. . .

_2003_   
  


Tony Stark is one of the richest men in the country, and the world—which is why it’s always struck Bucky as strange that he’d choose a place like Louisiana to settle down in.

He and his wife, Virginia 'Pepper' Potts, have started some new firm in Baton Rouge, some tech thing that’ll probably blow up to be worth billions in a year or two, although they used to live in New York.

A lot of New Yorkers down here in the bayou, Bucky thinks. Wonder what we’re all looking for. Just a different kind of swamp, maybe.

The reason Tony Stark is on Bucky’s mind, though, is the fact that he’s been running his mouth in the papers about the Dane murder, and about the incompetence of the state police. That doesn’t rub Bucky right, whether it’s true or not.

Now, Stark is sitting across from him in a booth at a diner, wearing a rumpled shirt and a loose tie, looking like he spent the night partying. Which, Bucky realizes with a snort, he probably did.

“I understand you took some issue with my remarks to the Advertiser and the Times,” Stark says, dumping three packets of sugar-substitute into his sludgy coffee. “Understand, I meant no offense.”

He’s a short man, early-forties, with dark hair and glittering dark eyes, the kind of eyes that are always darting around and lighting up and making blueprints all over everything.

Bucky sighs. “Look,” he says plainly “You’re as entitled to your opinions as anyone else, and I don’t fault you for them, but you have to understand that the public opinion is important. They see that someone with as big a name as you thinks we’re a bunch of morons with our heads up our asses, they’ll start saying so, too. And that makes my job—and everyone else who wears a badge, for that matter—a hell of a lot harder.”

Stark nods thoughtfully.

“Doesn’t it worry you, though?” he asks, tilting his head curiously, like a cat. “My wife, the D.A., has been wearing holes through our floor over this.”

Bucky hesitates for a second, unsure how much he ought to divulge to this person.

“Off the record?”

“I’m not a reporter, Detective Barnes,” Stark half-grins. “But, sure. Off the record. One New Yorker to another.”

Bucky wonders if it’s common knowledge, where he came from, or if Stark had someone pull his file. He bets the latter.

“Okay,” he says carefully “Then yeah. Hell yes, it worries me. You know how many underage girls we have roaming the streets any given night? Girls who are easy targets, y’know? And then there’s the weird staging of it…”

“The antlers,” Stark nods, humming thoughtfully. Bucky doesn’t need to ask how he knows that detail, unreleased as it is. Rich men with genius brains probably have no trouble getting access to certain documents, certain files. “Listen, I’m richer than god, and I want to help. You just let me know whatever I can do, and I’ll make sure it gets done.”

Bucky is quietly stunned by this, but he takes it in stride.

“That’s very generous of you, sir,” he says politely.

“It’s nothing,” Stark waves him off. “And call me Tony.”

. 

_2003 - outskirts of town_   
  


Raven’s apartment is cheap and cramped, right next to the railroad tracks. The single room is cluttered with loose, tacky clothing and fast-food bags.

“I used to have a trust fund,” she says, then laughs at Steve’s disbelieving expression. “No, really. I was adopted by the Xaviers when I was just a little girl. Things got bad when I turned thirteen, though…step-momma remarried, sonofabitch with a piece of shit son who used to beat on me and my brother…” She trails off.

She’s sitting on the bed, her long, bare legs crossed under her, and there are several baggies of pills in front of her on the worn duvet. There are prescription bottles with the labels ripped off, and a few syringes.

Steve is standing near her window, feeling bone-tired and sick of himself, looking out the dirty pane at a streetlight in the alley.

“You wanted blues?” Raven asks him.

“Quaaludes,” he replies. “The dopey stuff.” He turns to watch her rifle through the pills. “What’s it gonna cost me?”

She looks up, and he sees that her eyes are ringed with thick blue liner.

“Um…I’m thinking. I know I’ve seen the blue go for three a pill.”

Steve doesn’t want to haggle, doesn’t want to play games.

“We’ll say two-hundred for all of them.” He reaches for his wallet, starts pulling out twenties, counting them.

Raven blinks back her disbelief that the cop’s not going to rip her off. She takes the money when Steve hands it to her, her eyes wide and cautious.

Steve examines the bottle, rattles it. There are about sixty pills in it, give or take, and Raven relaxes for the first time.

“Thought you might just take them,” she says with a weak laugh. “Or that you wanted something else…some kind of something else.”

She reclines on her bed, legs stretching out from her tiny denim shorts. There are bruises on her knees, black and purple and huge. It’s an invitation, but it’s one that Steve will never accept.

“No.”

“You’re a good-looking guy,” Raven sighs, sitting up on her forearms. “You don’t need a shakedown to get some.”

She doesn’t stop watching him as he replaces the cap on the pills, stuffs them into the pocket of his blazer. All he can think about is getting home, popping that cap off, crushing up two of those pills…

“What’s your deal?” Raven asks, sounding annoyed. “You queer or something?”

Steve moves toward the window again, and outside in the street, someone breaks a bottle.

“I don’t have a deal,” he tells her.

“I mean, what you do,” she explains. “You’re not like the cops I know. Even the bad ones.”

Steve’s ears perk up at that. There’s something in the way she says it that makes it more than an offhand comment.

“Who are the bad ones?”

Raven’s eyes dart away quickly.

“Never mind,” she says in a hurry. “I thought you were gonna bust me last week.”

Steve shakes his head. “Not interested.”

“Hey, I was thinking about that girl you were looking for, the one with the green hair,” she says suddenly.

“You think you know something else?” Steve steps a little closer to her again, ignoring the throb in his veins, the call of his body for the drugs in his pocket.

“I just thought of this…” Raven ducks her head, like she’s a little afraid. “If she was gaming, and she was south side? I heard about this place, like a trailer park. A campground, like. Some of the working girls stay there. It’s like…like a hostel? A co-op? They call it the Hellfire Club Ranch.”

Steve clenches his jaw, feels the muscles working.

“Where is this?”

Raven shrugs. “South of Iberville Parish. Around Devil’s Den. Supposed to be, anyhow.”

“Swamp people,” Steve nods. “Meth cookers. Bikers.”

“Yeah,” Raven agrees, looking curious. “You know the place?”

She watches Steve’s face as he thinks to himself, putting the pieces on the table in his mind in a new order, seeing that he had the angles wrong, that they just needed to be turned a little—

“Take care, Raven,” he tells her, heading for the door. “I’ll find you again soon.”

. . .

_2011_   
  


“Yeah, I knew about Steve’s flashbacks,” Bucky tells the detectives. “Neural fallout from his time in the HIDTA.”

Morales looks puzzled, so he adds, “As in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area? Three years undercover, you know what that means?”

“Steven Rogers’ files are all still sealed, actually,” Carter says.

“Really?” Bucky rubs his stubbled jaw, bemused. “Well, I can tell you what I know, but…wouldn’t feel right to tell you all of it. You’ll have to ask him.”

He watches his cigarette burn between his two fingers.

“Way I understood it, he resented being alive, with Peggy—that was his wife—and their unborn baby being dead. He transferred from robbery to Narco, started going hard 24/7. Within a year he was ripping off dealers and robbing couriers. Nothing like the guy I knew.”

. . .

“Yeah,” Steve agrees easily, when the detectives share what Barnes had mentioned about Steve’s past. “Yeah, that’s what happened. I was holing up in some ass-crack Ramada Inn with a couple of 8-balls and Don Julio.”

He leans back in the chair, and wishes for something to do with his hands.

“Somewhere in there, I lost myself,” he adds. “Somewhere in there, I emptied a nine into a crankhead who’d been injecting his infant son with his own blood. Guy tells me he was trying to ‘purify’ him.”

Morales looks like he wants to throw up, while Carter is just a little pale around the edges, mouth tight.

“State Attorney and IA Commander gave me one shot. Keep your profile, they said. Be our maniac addict…” he trails off. “They made me a floater. I became like some kind of trick that got passed around to any state department or interagency task force that needed a deep cover narc. Got Special Agent Hill a lot of political clout.” It’s hard not to sound bitter when he tells them these things. “Three years of that, and I couldn’t get the walls in my apartment to stop whispering. Or the carpet fibers to quit shrieking. I kept hallucinating that basement…”

He pulls a slim flask from his jacket pocket, noticing the vague, horrified expressions on the two detectives faces.

“Relax, detectives,” he pours a little of it in the empty mug, offers it to them to sniff. “It’s just tonic water. I like the bitterness. I’ve been sober six years, but I still like the taste. You really don’t know all this shit I’m telling you?”

Morales clears his throat, then does it again. Steve shrugs.

“Well, alright. January of ’01, I killed three gangbangers high on the pyramid of the heroin game in NYC. Took one in the chest. Spent four months at Mt. Sinai, then got sent to a psych ward. They offered me a medical pension, I told ‘em to shove it. Told ‘em to put me on homicide somewhere.” He takes a sip of the tonic water, pursing his lips at the taste. “People owed me a lot of favors by then. They knew that I was what they’d made me, in a way. Special Agent Hill was State Attorney General by that point…well, you can figure it out.”

  
. . .  
  


_2003_   
  


They drive through a lot of fields, around a lot of the bayous that break up the townships.

Steve thinks to himself, staring out the window at the moving images. Tall grass and cane against the gray-blue sky. It’s humid as hell, the back of his shirt already sticking to his skin with sweat. Barnes is deeply entrenched in his self-loathing today, from his body language, and Steve’s keeping his mouth shut.

“You got a specific location for this place, pal? Or are we just gonna wander around til we find it?” He sounds irritated, but then again, he usually does.

Steve just keeps staring out the window. “Gonna have to get directions.”

There’s a beat, both of them taking in the landscape out the car windows, completely void of any signs of civilization.

Then, they both crack up laughing.

. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“Steve had the keenest eye for human weakness that I think I’ve ever seen, and that includes my ex-wife. If you know anything about her, she’s got like, sonar for that shit.” Bucky tells the camera.

. . .  
  


_2003_   
  


There’s a defunct service station and auto garage a few miles further down the road, and they pull the car into the gravel lot to stop and ask directions.

Inside, two men are fiddling with something on a work table, spare parts, odds and ends, as Bucky and Steve approach.

“You fellas ever hear of a place called the Hellfire Ranch?” Bucky asks them.

Both men are skinny, tweakers by the look of them, with greasy hair and raggedy clothes. They appear to be working on a dismantled hi-fi sound system, its electronic guts strewn across the work table.

The two men shake their heads, not making eye contact.

Bucky and Steve walk back out of the garage, back to the car. It’s rough, hitting so many walls in so little time. Climbing into the driver’s side, Bucky stops when he sees that Steve hasn’t opened his door.

He doesn’t get in the car at all. “Wait here,” he says, and heads off back in the direction of the garage. Bucky exhales loudly, then gets out of the car to follow.

“Sorry,” Steve says in a level tone, a sharp contrast to his current hulking body and stomping gait. “I realized we got off on the wrong foot.” He kicks over the men’s stools.

Bucky stands in the doorway, not moving.

“So, I figured I’d come back,” Steve continues mildly, though his jaw is clenched. “Put the right foot up your ass.”

He smashes a half-dismantled turntable over the head of one of the men, then grabs the other by the neck, slamming his face down against the table.

“Fuck,” Bucky hisses under his breath, frozen in place. “Fucking fuck, Rogers.”

Steve is breathing hard, his hair mussed and forehead gleaming with sweat. He catches Bucky staring, and their eyes meet. It’s like lightning, like a jolt to his system. Bucky has to look away; it hurts to want.

  
When they go back to the car, Steve seems more relaxed than ever.

“We wanna go south on 220, then loop off the shoulder before it hits 74,” he says. “Gotta go down a dirt fishing road toward Kelly Creek.”

Bucky swallows and nods, looking straight ahead as he turns the keys in the ignition.

. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“I didn’t know then, not all of it,” Bucky says, “But he told me later. All that undercover stuff…looking back, I just think that he hadn’t quite transitioned yet, y’know? Like soldiers rotating back into the world. He had…He had some issues needed working through. He worked ‘em through, though. Steve was,” he swallows thickly, a lump suddenly in his throat. “He was a straight arrow for a long time.”

“What about”—Detective Morales starts, but Bucky stops him with a hand raised and a shake of his head.

“ _No_. No way, pal. You wanna know about that stuff, you need to ask Rogers.”

He knows what this looks like to the detectives; like he’s covering for his ex-partner, his ex-…not ‘lover,’ Bucky thinks viciously. That’s not the right word for what they were. Maybe they could have been, if things hadn’t been so fucked up, but. Well. They were, so they weren’t. Lovers, that is.

. . .  
  


_2003 - Hellfire Club Ranch_

  
The Hellfire Club Ranch is a series of trailer homes, old and decrepit with a fresh coat of paint slapped over—like a craggy old meth-whore with makeup covering her sores and pockmarks. The trailers are arranged in a kind of semicircle, like a wagon train nestled deep in these backwoods.

Laundry hangs between trailers, all female items, and there are an abundance of antennas on the roofs of the trailers. The yard around is unusually clean, compared to everywhere else they’ve canvassed, and only two cars are parked nearby, both beat-up rust buckets.

A skinny woman comes out of one trailer, crossing the yard to meet them at their car. She tells them her name is Emma, and invites them in.

  
It’s messy, but not overly so, with a scattered assortment of magazines and dirty plates. There are two younger women lounging on a beat-up couch, watching a daytime soap on the television. They look up as Emma leads Steve and Bucky inside.

Steve notes the three small bedrooms down the thin hallway they walk through, each with a single mattress on the floor.

They stop in the kitchenette, standing slightly awkwardly in the cramped space. Bucky and Steve are both broad-shouldered, tall men. Emma is around six-foot herself, a tall woman. There isn’t much room in here, so they’re pressed up against each other, shoulders bumping.

“I’m usually here, on account of the lease being in my name,” Emma tells them. Her platinum-bleached hair is in rollers, and her face is young under the heavy makeup. “Lots of girls come through here, though…”

“And this is what,” Steve spits “Like, some kind of hillbilly bunny ranch?”

Bucky winces, elbowing Steve in the side, hard.

“Ex _cuse_ me?” Emma folds her arms over her chest. “Maybe you should talk to the sheriff before you start tossing accusations around.”

Bucky pitches his voice nice and easy, shooting a glare at Steve quickly.

“Relax, hey, it doesn’t matter. We ain’t vice cops,” he tells her.

“Something happened to a girl,” Steve cuts in, undaunted. “We need to know if any of you knew her.”

He’s got Lorna’s mugshot, pulled it from inside his jacket, and he hands it to Emma.

“Shit,” she says, nonplussed. “That’s…yeah, that’s Lori. Something happened to her?”

One of the girls from the sofa wanders in, wearing just an oversized t-shirt. She looks sixteen.

“Something happened to Lori?” She rubs at her eyes sleepily, and it makes Bucky want to punch something, because she’s just a kid.

“Go on back to your trailer, honey,” Emma says in a voice meant to be soothing. “They’ll come talk to you in a minute.”

.

The girl, Wanda, is very pretty, and in the light of her cleaner, more spacious trailer, Bucky can see that she’s likely closer to 14.

“How old are you?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

Steve is looking at a collection of Precious Moments figurines that sit atop a series of wall-mounted shelves. There are a few snow globes, too, containing unicorns and castles covered in vines and roses.

Emma stands at the kitchenette counter, smoking a cigarette and listening.

Wanda’s eyes dart over to Emma and back.

“Eighteen,” she stumbles on the word. Bucky notes that she has traces of an unfamiliar accent—likely Eastern Europe, some smaller Caucus country, to his ear.

“You got ID?”

“Someone stole my wallet,” the girl lies. “Last week.”

Bucky frowns at Emma, who keeps on smoking with a nonchalant defiance. She’s clearly made her peace with what it is they do here.

“You know Lorna? Lori?” Steve tries to get the interview back on track, and Bucky’s grateful.

“Yeah,” Wanda nods shakily. “A lot of us did. She was here…a good bit? Is that right?” She looks to Emma for confirmation, who nods.

“For about three months, more or less. Not every night, though.” Emma examines her brightly-painted manicure.

“You and Lorna, were you pretty close?” Bucky is trying so hard to be gentle, to be someone this little girl can tell her secrets to. He feels like a scumbag, even though it’s his job.

The girl shrugs, her green eyes full of tears.

“She was nice to me, when I first came around. Gave me advice and things like that.”

“Advice about what?” Bucky asks, more sharply than he means to.

Wanda glances at Emma again.

“…Nothing. You know, just…just how to be,” she says finally.

“You have any idea where she might have been staying, these past few weeks?”

She thinks about it, wiping at her eyes with the hem of her t-shirt. She doesn’t realize that doing so has lifted the shirt up to expose her underwear. Bucky looks away, feeling sick.

“I don’t…her ex is in prison,” Wanda says slowly. “I supposed she maybe was meeting someone new? Had a new place, and that’s why we didn’t see her anymore. She was going to church. I was hoping that maybe she just…got out of the life.”

Steve frowns. “Anybody else around here might know?” He asks.

“I…I’m not knowing,” the girl replies. “She talked to me more than anyone else, I think.”

Bucky turns to Emma.

“We’re gonna need to question any of the girls who might’ve known her,” he says sternly.

Emma smirks around her cigarette. “That’s a tougher ask than you think, detective. Folks be staying away, they hear y’all are at the ranch.”

Steve doesn’t smile.

“It’s the best way to get us to leave quick, then,” he says.

.

Back in Emma’s trailer, Wanda is gone.

Emma is still smoking, her third cigarette since their arrival.

“That girl is _not_ eighteen,” Bucky grits through his teeth. “Sheriff know you got teenagers working here?”

“What the hell do you know about that girl? About where she’s been, where she’s come from?” Emma puts a hand on her hip, cocking her head. “What kind of provisions you think the world makes for a woman in these parts? My husband proved out to be a lying piece of dog shit, and the only thing I ever got off him was his daddy owned a little hunting lease. This. You want to know Wanda’s situation, before she ran out on her uncle?”

“Take it easy,” Steve cautions.

“There’s other places for her to go,” Bucky says helplessly.

“Such dick-swinging bullshit from you,” Emma scoffs. “It’s a woman’s body, isn’t it? A woman’s choice?”

“Sometimes,” Bucky concedes. “Doesn’t make it right for a little girl. Doesn’t make it healthy.”

Emma stubs out her cigarette, clearly getting ready to lay into them. Tear them both a new one.

“Don’t people walk around this earth all the time having sex for free?” She puts her hands on her hips. “And unprotected? You want to stop disease, you should stop people having casual sex. Why is it you add business to the mix, boys like you can’t stand the thought? It’s ‘cause suddenly you don’t own it like you thought you did.”

Bucky wants to tell her she’s wrong, that she’s got both of them pegged wrong. He’s not the kind of man she’s assuming he is, and neither is Steve. But around here, in this part of the country, it’s better to tell people you’re a woman-beater than to say you’re gay. Bi. Whatever.

Wanda comes in with a small canvas bag, handing it to Bucky without looking at him. He passes it to Steve, who immediately begins digging through it.

The contents include a few bundled wads of clothing, some makeup, a ratty paperback Harlequin, a notebook, and a number of folded, yellow flyers.

Steve starts reading the notebook, and Bucky refocuses his attention on Emma.

“How about her customers? Anybody who was a regular that you could point out?”

Emma looks away, blinking. The eyeliner and mascara are so heavy on her lids and lashes, it must take real effort to do so.

“Now that…” she doesn’t look at him “I would not know.”

Steve stands abruptly, putting the notebook back in the back, along with the rest of its contents.

“Ma’am,” he extends a hand to Emma. “Miss,” and to Wanda. “You’ve both been very helpful. Thank you. You have friends with the State CID, remember that.”

Bucky doesn’t miss the fact that Steve’s slipped the girl some cash on the sly.

They hoof it back to the car, Lorna’s old bag in Steve’s hands, while Bucky flails for something to hold onto. They get into the vehicle, sitting there for a few minutes while Steve pores over the notebook and Bucky seethes.

“Can you believe this shit, Steve?” He’s raging, he wants to break someone’s face open with his bare hands. “A girl that young? And you know the sheriff’s got a stake in the place. Fucking hell.”

“ _‘Closed my eyes and saw St. Michael and his sword on fire over my head…’_ Bucky, this is like her journal,” Steve says in a rush, clearly excited to have found it. He keeps reading. “ _‘…and his voice was silent but what he said was spelled in flames that came from his mouth…’_ ”

Bucky jams the key into the ignition, turns it so hard he worries it might snap.

“She sounds like a nutcase,” he frowns at the steering wheel. “Too much of whatever it was she was on, for too long.”

“It’s…interesting…” Steve says, still flipping through the book.

A few moments pass, and then he pulls the yellow flyers from Lorna’s bag.

“Think maybe we should stay out here today? Check around the bars and truck-stops for johns who maybe knew her?”

“Yeah, Buck, whatever you want,” Steve says absently. “Look at this.” He hands Bucky one of the flyers.

It’s a cheap photocopy on yellow paper, a strange amalgam of collage cut from magazines and magic-marker text. There’s an image of a stone Christ, a globe, flames, and drawn black tentacles reaching up into the flames. Two eyes are above, watching over it all, and the background is scattered with uneven, black five-point stars.

Below that is handwritten text that reads ‘ARE YOU LOST? DO YOU FEEL THE FLAMES AT YOUR HEELS? JESUS CHRIST CAN SAVE YOU! YOU ARE OUR FAMILY - VISIT YOUR HOME - SPEAK WITH CHRIST - WORSHIP IN FELLOWSHIP - BE RESTORED - IT’S NOT TOO LATE!!!’ Then, below that, ‘FRIENDS OF CHRIST THE REDEEMER’ and an address.

“Huh.” Bucky grunts, handing it back to Steve. “Lot of those type places, tent-revival ministries are real big down here. It’s weird shit, Steve.”

“We’re done cruising johns,” is all Steve says.

Bucky nods, and puts the car in drive. They head back out toward the highway.

. . .  
  
 _2011_  
  


“That little girl at the Hellfire Club,” Steve says to the detectives, sipping his tonic water. “It was eating at Barnes. It ate at me too—or, it would have, if I had been in any shape to feel anything back then, but…yeah, no, that kind of shit always fucked him up more than anything else.”

“Did Barnes ever have any children?” Detective Carter asks, though Steve suspects she already knows the answer.

“Nope,” Steve shakes his head. “No kids. Probably for the best. Being a cop is no way to be a father, that much I’ve seen.”

“Why do you think he was so affected by it, then?”

“Well, _gee_.” Steve can’t help the biting sarcasm that escapes. “Little girl prostituting herself, what’s there to be affected by? Jesus, you people.”

. . .  
  


_2003_   
  


“You fucked him yet?” Natasha is sitting across from Bucky at the dinner table, dressed in a cotton sun frock, tight in the bodice and flaring out in the skirt, black with a pattern of large peonies and roses. She’s going out later, with some of her coworkers from the D.A.’s office.

Bucky makes a face at her.

“Will you lay off with that shit? God,” he mutters into his beer.

Dinner is takeout, like it is most nights, and Bucky’s had three beers already in an attempt to take the edge off. All they’ve done is blur the edges so he can’t see them. He can still feel them, though, sharp and ready to slice.

“He wants it, too,” Natasha says, dipping a waffle-fry into a pool of hot sauce. “You should go for it, maybe relieve some stress in you both.”

Bucky wants to ask how she knows that, how she can be so sure that Steve is—but he doesn’t. He hates himself for even thinking about it, for being so eager. Steve isn’t like that, and besides; he’s all fucked up. They both are. That’s all there is to it.

“You know, Tasha,” he sighs, cracking his neck. “It’s bad enough, the shit I have to wade through on a daily basis, and now you’re harping on this, this wild fantasy you’ve cooked up about me and Rogers. I’ve been working forty hours straight, and I just wanted to come home and stop thinking about shit.”

“You don’t get what you need from me when we fuck, babe,” she tells him patiently. “I know it, and you know it. You aren’t the type to go cruising for someone, so you go without. It’s not healthy.”

Bucky looks at his plate, the food that he’s barely touched, and he exhales, feeling the air go out of his irritation. All that’s left is self-loathing, is self-pity.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” he says, getting up and grabbing his dishes. He leans down to peck her on the cheek. “Have a good time tonight. Tell your friends I said hello.”

He does the dishes, listening to the sounds of his ex-wife putting on her red pumps with the four-inch heels, grabbing her purse and keys. Her friend, May, pulls up outside, beeps the horn of her little compact car. The door opens and closes, and then Natasha is gone.

The house is empty.

Bucky finishes up the dishes, then strips off his dirty clothes on the way to the shower.

He lets the water hit his back and shoulders for a few minutes, groaning at the pressure on his sore muscles, tense from so many hours in the car.

He thinks about Rogers, even though he tries not to. He can’t stop thinking about Natasha’s words. _He wants it too, he wants it too, he wants it too._ They echo in his brain, and then his dick’s hard.

He jerks off quick and frantic, spilling all over his hand and the tile wall in a matter of minutes. As penance, he stands under the shower spray afterwards, long after the hot water is all used up. All the cold water does, though, is tell him how overheated he really is. Burning up. Like there’s fire in his veins. Like hell's inside him. 

. . .  
  
2011  
  


“Listen,” Steve is starting to show his irritation as time in the interview room wears on. He adjusts himself in his seat. “Can we cut through this a minute? I know what’s going on. I have friends on the force. I read. You caught another one, in Lake Charles. Antlers.”

He sits back, waits for them to confirm or deny.

“We need the information to replace what was lost in”—Morales says

—“Right, right. The old files lost in the flood. But you’re taking this the long way around, you know. Keep asking me about Buck—about Barnes. You’re trying to jam somebody up.”

There’s a beat, and both detectives school their faces into neutral, perfect masks.   
  
. . .

_2003_   
  


They drive past the burned out remains of a church where the flyer’s address said to go.

There are high gables, but no roof, the outer walls standing alone in a field of overgrown sawgrass and scrub.

“Maybe it was moved somewhere else?” Bucky tries to think why it would have been burnt down, though, before moving on.

“There’s no date on the flyer,” Steve replies. “Wait, no. Go back. Make a u-turn.”

“What? Why?” Bucky slows, though, already making the turn.

They pull down the dirt road towards the burnt building. The front windows are broken, and soot stains run halfway up the walls. There’s no door, no roof, and kudzu has taken over most of the structure. It reminds Bucky of some insidious tentacles. Mother Nature’s own Cthulhu.

A field of blackbirds erupts beside the church just as they exit the car, scattering like a swarm of locusts.

“No numbers on the place,” Bucky says. “Looks like the fire was a long time ago.”

Steve looks away from the scorched structure, to Bucky, then back at the building. They head towards it.

The church floor is covered in rubble, broken pews and shattered glass crunching under the soles of their shoes. The walls have been vandalized in the usual ways, and the altar is crushed and strewn with debris and actual shit.

One window is still intact, a high one above the back wall. It’s round, a stained glass number depicting the Madonna’s Ascension. The sunlight through the window is kaleidoscopic, the stained color falling on both men as their feet crunch over the detritus.

“Okay. Now what? Place has been trashed. This damage is old, Steve. No leads here, pal.” Bucky kicks at a rock.

Steve stands still, too still. It’s unnerving. He looks over the walls and the graffiti, his eyes sharp and intense. They fall on a particular section of wall, and then he starts walking towards it.

“Bucky…”

Bucky crosses the trashed space to where Steve stands, studying the wall.

He sees a large, crude painting, the silhouette of an unclothed woman, kneeling as if in prayer. From her head sprout two, unmistakable deer antlers. Black, asymmetrical stars hang above her. 

It is the exact pose in which Lorna Dane was found in the woods.

Bucky looks at Steve, and they hold eye contact for several moments, confused as to what they’ve found, what it might mean.  
  


The humid, sticky air is stifling, but there’s a chill running up Bucky’s spine.

 

 

 

Next episode: 3. the Locked Room...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really pleased that a couple of people have left comments on this! I realize this is a really obscure idea for an AU, but I'm gonna see it through. I can't believe I just typed this many words again in one day. I seriously don't mean to be writing this so fast, but, well. I do think it's easier since there's a guideline for plot (although mine is obviously divergent from that plot in may places) but the structure being there helps. 
> 
> Anyway, read, enjoy, let me know what you think! I'll be re-watching TD season 1 and weeping! <3


	3. The Locked Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2003 - As Steve and Bucky's personalities clash, the case gets more complex. There's proof that Lorna may not have been the killer's first victim, and more mysterious allusions to the Yellow King and Hydra are heard. 
> 
> 2011 - The detectives keep on hounding Steve and Bucky, intent on getting the answers they want. They get plenty of answers they don't want, to questions they never asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT! TRIGGER WARNING!
> 
> Okay, for this chapter, there is a brief interlude in which Bucky is discussing why he lost faith in the Catholic church, and he brings up a case of molestation by a priest. He describes in detail what the priest did, and it's very upsetting and gross. I only added it because it's a detail of a case that I read (I was a criminal justice major once upon a time) and it has stuck with me for a long time. It makes me sick, but society needs to recognize and actually speak aloud what these people do to children so they can feel the true impact of the acts. The trigger warning is for the 2011 section that comes after the sentence "You have to find out the hard way" in the section before, where Bucky is lying awake with racing thoughts.

  
_2003_   
  


The drawing they found is primitive, in the same way as the spiral found on Lorna’s body, and Steve keeps recreating it in his sketchbook. It was chalky, blurred in its outline. Soft-focus. It looks, to Steve, like a drawing depicting a Wendigo he once saw in a book about Native American lore.

He draws it over and over, wondering what it could possibly mean. He draws tentacles, too, black and sprawling and evil. Gnarled and twisting like tree roots.

He draws Bucky’s face in profile, the sharp angle of his jaw, the swoop of his coiffed hair that waves in the humid heat. He shades the drawing in with care, then debates ripping it up. He shouldn’t be drawing him.

He draws a cross, and below it, a tangle of rose thorns and black stars. He ghosts the lines for two antlers, coming up around the cross. He draws a spiral in the lower corner and scrawls the initials _L.K.D._ Lorna Kelly Dane. He doesn’t know why.

Sleep doesn’t come, so he keeps drawing. His hand cramps up, though, after a few hours, and he has to stop.

In his head, lying down on the pillow, he is drawing. He makes the lines across his brain, like a map for the next time.

. .  
  


“Billy Lee Stryker,” Steve says by way of greeting when he walks into the incident room. “What do you know about him?”

Bucky shrugs, thinking for a second about the familiar name.

“He’s got connections,” he says. “Deep ones. Related to the governor, and he’s voiced a lot of concerns publicly for the religious implications of Lorna Dane’s murder.”

Steve grunts in agreement. “Huh. Yeah, that makes sense. He’s like, some kind of big deal evangelist, right?”

Bucky shrugs again. “Yeah, I guess so. Look, I have to level with you, I don’t know more than I need to about that shit. People who think snake handling is a way to get closer to the Lord. I’m an Easter-Christmas Catholic, like a normal person.”

Something about that must strike Steve as funny, because he starts to laugh quietly.

“What?” Bucky shoots him a glare. “That funny to you, punk?”

Steve just smiles, shakes his head; his smile is like a shot to Bucky’s heart.

. . .

  
_2011_   
  


“Parish FD told us the church burned down,” Bucky tells the detectives. He’s finished all six beers, now, and he’s taken his knife from his boot so he can cut the tops off of each can. The groan of the cheap metal under the knife’s ill-kept blade is nauseating. “Four months before we found it. They were in Franklin, then, when we were looking for them. Old time religion, tent revival ministry. You can imagine what Mr. Charisma thought of that,” he rolls his eyes.

“Was Rogers very vocal about his disdain for organized religion?” Carter asks, to which Bucky snorts.

“Look, what you gotta understand is, we never heard about any shit like what you all have down here. Snake handlers. Fainting in the spirit. Speaking in tongues. It just—it’s not common, not in New York City. Steve was already sour on religion before he came to Louisiana.” He folds the flat strip of aluminum as he speaks, nicking his fingertip a few times on the sharp edges. “Used to be, I still took comfort in my nominal Catholicism. But, like Steve told me once, religion is a language virus. It rewrites pathways in the brain. Dulls critical thinking. I guess that stuck with me,” he finishes.

“So, it’s all just a big joke, a big scam?” Morales leans in, curious. “Billion people in the world just happen to be wrong about it?”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah,” he says, shaking his head. “Now you’re getting it.”

. . .  
  


 _2003 - Franklin_  
  
Scott Summers is the preacher who owns the burned-out church. He’s shorter than both Bucky and Steve, with hair slicked up in a shiny Elvis pompadour, and big ol’ sideburns. He has sunglasses on, even though he’s a preacher and he’s in the shade of the tent.

They’d asked around until someone told them, and gave them Summers’ name. They also found out, in a search of the database, that Scott is Alex’s older brother. Lorna’s ex. It’s an interesting line to draw between two already vaguely-connected dots, but Bucky’s not sure it’s much more than that.

  
In order to meet with him, Steve and Bucky have to wait at the very back of the huge crowd of people packed into the canvas tent in the sweltering heat, watching ardently as Summers gives a wild sermon.

“What do you think the average IQ of this group is, huh?” Steve leans close so Bucky can hear him over the loud worship music, frenzied and brassy.    
Bucky can’t think with Steve so close, not when he can smell his soap and sweat.

“Can you see Texas up there on your high horse, Steve?” His voice comes out sounding snappish and impatient. “What do you know about these people?”

And, honestly, he was thinking the same thing; he was standing here, judging every poor asshole who came here to get every last cent conned out of them. It just irks him to hear Steve say it.

“It’s just observation and deduction, Buck. I see a propensity for obesity. Poverty. A yen for…fairy-tales. People putting what few bucks they have in a little wicker basket being passed around.” He turns, shoves his hands in his pockets. His face is flushed from the heat, pinkish red. “I think it’s safe to say nobody here’s gonna be splitting the atom, Buck.”

Bucky feels himself scowl, no matter how much he wants to agree. It’s the principle of the thing. Steve Rogers was never mean, never cruel. But Bucky doesn’t know Steve Rogers anymore, it would seem.

“You see that?” He bites out. “Your fuckin’ attitude, Rogers. Not everyone wants to sit alone in an empty room, jacking off to murder manuals. Some people enjoy community. A common good.”

It tastes like the worst kind of lie, but he’s already said it. He can’t take it back. Community. What bullshit. Above the pulpit, there’s a flap of tent that hangs down, printed with large black letters. The words make up Proverbs 3:5. _Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not to your own understanding._

“Oh, I’m real sure you’re all about the community,” Steve rolls his eyes. “And anyhow, if the common good has to make up fairy-tales, then it’s not good for anybody.”

Bucky says nothing; he doesn’t think speaking would be a good idea. Who knows what might come out.

On the stage, all the way at the other side of the pulsing sea of fat, jubilant churchgoers, the preacher says, “You are a stranger to yourself! The world is a veil. The face you wear is not your own!”

And the people all say, _hallelujah._  
  


.  
  


They learn from Scott Summers—who was a student of Billy Lee Stryker’s for a few years—that Lorna used to show up at services with a tall man with a shiny face. Steve thinks maybe scar-tissue, but Bucky’s not so sure.

There’s a mentally handicapped man with the ministry, and he’s got a record for public masturbation outside an elementary school, so Bucky thinks he might look good for their murder—that is, until they find out that the guy did time in Angola, got cornered in the showers and had his balls cut off with a razor.

“Compassion is ethics, Detectives,” Reverend Summers tells them as he escorts them back to their car. Bucky doesn’t know what to make of that.

  
Back at HQ, they round up as many local miscreants and reoffenders with similar features, but to no avail. Phillips tells them they have two days left on the case, before it gets pulled from them and given to the task force. The time crunch makes them both edgy, though neither would admit it if asked.

Steve interrogates a guy who jerks off in kids’ bedrooms, lulls him into a false sense of security and acceptance so well, that by the time the guy is crying and begging for God’s forgiveness and confessing to all of it, Bucky’s rattled to the core when Steve simply says, “Alright, you’ll be booked and charged, now. There is no forgiveness. There is nothing for you.” Then, he calls for the guards to come take the suspect back to the lockup. “

  
For some reason, they’re loath to give up the case. They caught it, and they want to be the ones to solve it, to see it through.

Steve raids the department’s case files, rifling through photo after photo after photo of dead women and girls. It turns his stomach, but he keeps going until it settles. ’Til that cold stability comes over him, and he’s on autopilot.

Then, like a light at the end of his tunnel-vision, there’s Trish Walker’s file.

Patricia Walker, cause of death listed as accidental drowning, was pulled out of the bayou with severe abdominal lacerations and blood full of LSD and meth. The spiral on her back is familiar, and Steve shouts for Bucky to come see.

Trish Walker, formerly of Pelican Island, Louisiana, possibly the one who came before Lorna.

  
. . .

  
_2003_   
  


Up in Pelican Island, population 300, they meet Henry Walker, Trish’s grandfather. He’s an old Cajun with several gaps for missing teeth, a scrubby beard like steel wool, and an accent that Steve has a hard time making sense of.

They’re out on a small pier, watching him set and collect crab traps, pulling them up full of crawfish.

“They told me Trish done drowned after Hurricane Rita,” the man says, emptying the trap into a cooler on his little boat. “What this about?”

Bucky looks at Steve, who gives a small nod to indicate that Bucky keep the lead.

“You know of any man in Trish’s life?” He asks, flipping through his notes. “A boyfriend, someone she went off with?”

Walker thinks for a moment, then rubs his beard. “That’d be Will Simpson. Older boy, bad family. Never heard none good about the Simpsons.”

“Where did Trish go to school?” Bucky asks him. “We have it on file that Trish went until tenth grade, when she dropped out.”

“That’d be Light of the Way. All kids from Pelican Island have to be bussed two hours away just to go to school, otherwise they gotta go all the way to Iberville,” he shakes his head in disgust. “I never care much for them God-botherers. Make my skin sit wrong.”

“You remember any of Trish’s classmates?” Bucky looks at the warped wood below his feet, and at the murky water around them. “Anyone she hung around with?”

Henry coughs, looking away. When he looks back at them, he’s squinting, like he’s suddenly decided he doesn’t trust them.

“What’s this about? You tryin’ to tell me she ain’t done drowned?”

Steve puts his hands in his pockets. “Just looking for a man who might’ve known her,” he says easily.

Henry seems to accept this, because the next thing out of his mouth is that he’s saved a box of Trish’s things, including a small yearbook from Light of the Way. In her yearbook picture, Patricia Walker is a blonde with big, bunnyish front teeth and features prettier than her lineage would suggest. She certainly didn't look like that in the pictures from her case file. 

They leave Pelican Island with a name: Will Simpson.

It’s something, at least.

. .

_Light of the Way Christian Academy_

They pull up alongside a long drive, on the Light of the Way property. The school is overgrown with vines and kudzu, and has obviously been closed for sometime. There’s a man on a ride-on mower, though, making straight lines of the lawn. Someone is paying for it to be maintained, at least.

Steve gets out of the car while Bucky waits on a call from the guy he’s got running Simpson’s name in the database.

“What can you tell me about this place?” Steve asks the man on the mower, a big, heavyset guy with a worker’s jumpsuit on.

“I don’t know much,” he replies. His face is sweaty and flushed in the heat. “I come here every two weeks, mow the lawn, trim the hedges and whatnot. School done been closed five years now.”

Steve is about to ask him a few more questions, when Bucky starts laying on the car horn, long blasts punctuated with short chirps. Steve excuses himself and heads back toward the car.

“First of all,” Bucky grumbles as Steve gets back in the car, “Who walks that fuckin’ slow?”

“I’m guessing you didn’t call me back here just to rag on my walking.”

“No. No I did not.” Bucky has a wild sort of gleam in his eye, flashing and sparking. “Will Simpson was at Avoyelles doing a nickel for statutory rape,” he says in a rush. “Guess who his cellmate was for the last for months he was inside?”

Steve jerks his head. “No shit. Alex Summers?”

“Alex Summers,” Bucky confirms. “What do you say we go up to Avoyelles, pay Summers a little visit?”

. . .

_2011_   
  


“So, you didn’t like the revival ministry?” Detective Carter is looking at her notes. “You and Barnes have similar views on religion.”

Steve laughs.

“That so? He’s changed his tune, then, since we last talked. Me, though? I’ve always thought it was a crock. Since one monkey looked at the other monkey and said ‘the man in the sky says for you to give me your fuckin’ share.”

The two detectives look nonplussed, but Morales seems uncomfortable. Steve wonders if he might be religious.

“It comes down to this,” he continues, gesturing with his hands. “People are so goddamn frail, they’d rather put their last penny in a wishing well than buy dinner.”

He wishes he still drank. He could use a drink or six, talking about all this shit.

He knows that they haven’t even gotten into the real mess, yet. The kids, the lab out in the field…the Stryker connection. There’s so much underneath the surface of this case, so many gnarled, black roots, all twisted up and impossible to undo. Evil tentacles wound around the whole state of Louisiana. Not for the first time, he considers that maybe he ought to leave. Go back to New York, or maybe try Illinois. Iowa. One of those anonymous midwestern states.

But Bucky’s not in New York, or Illinois, or Iowa.   
  
  
 Bucky’s here, in Louisiana still, so that’s where Steve’ll be, too.

. . .

_2003_   
  


Bucky lays awake thinking about Steve.

It’s nothing new, except that it is, sort of.

It would be easy to believe that Steve’s newfound faith in a meaningless universe and the aberration of humanity represents his true nature, but…

When he was talking about all those people at the tent revival, labeling them and passing judgement, he didn’t sound convinced. He sounded, to Bucky, like a college sophomore, regurgitating Nietzsche after their first exposure to him. He speaks like a man who has carefully selected and crafted his nihilistic philosophy, but also, who spits it back out into the world as though it’s the only way he can be sure of what he believes.

Bucky wants to fix it for Steve, to fix the world for him. It’s the same impossible desire he had when they were young, the need to soften every blow, to right every wrong. He wonders why he’s like this.

He feels the walls of his room closing in some nights, whether Natasha is there beside him or not. Tonight, she’s staying elsewhere, and Bucky’s not bothered. The nightmares keep him up either way.

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees things he doesn’t want to see. The guy from 1986. The bodies of Lorna Dane, of Trish Walker. The dead babies they find in dumpsters sometimes. The toddler that was pulled out of Lake Pontchartrain last summer, strangled and raped and stuffed in a black garbage bag by her own father.

It’s like a never-ending loop, a film reel that plays endlessly behind his eyelids, and he wants out of the theater, but it’s all fucked up because the theater is his own brain. Can’t get away from your own brain.

  
They don’t tell you about that, growing up. They don’t teach you how much of a danger you can be to yourself. You have to find out the hard way.

. . .

  
_2011_   
  


“So, what made you change your mind?” Detective Carter talks like a therapist sometimes, then other times, she sounds like what she is. A cop. “About religion, I mean. Did Rogers convert you to his way of thinking?”

Bucky laughs. “He didn’t need to. The Catholic church don’t need no help alienating its flock, I’ll tell you that. Religion is what wars are fought over. Blood gets spilled for no reason other than ‘you don’t believe what I believe, so you have to die.’ Tell me what’s so great about that?”

Neither detective says anything in the long pause that follows, so Bucky goes on.

“Couple years back, there was this priest. Oliver something. Molested so many kids in the state of California, he can’t even remember ‘em all. People don’t like to think about this part—and why would they?—but, you have to. You have to walk through what he actually did. He raped a nine-month old baby girl, Detectives. He was an adult man, and he forced his adult-sized penis into the vagina of a nine-month old baby. And the diocese in his area just swept it under the fucking rug. Fuck.”

He crushes one of the empty beer cans in his fist, feeling his teeth grind as he does so. It’s sick, the things people do to other people. To children. To animals. People who wear the cloth and stand at the pulpit and claim to have the keys to the gates of Eternal Life, they’re the worst of the whole heap of different pieces of shit the world’s got to offer. It makes Bucky sick, makes him angry.

“You feel very strongly about this,” Morales says, like it’s this great fucking observation. Bucky looks at him with disgust.

“I don’t see how a person could know about that shit going on and still think that the Church had any fucking interest in doing right by anyone. It’s like dirty cops, always covering for each other, no one taking the blame, no one paying the price for what they’ve done.” He leans forward in his seat, eyes blazing, and points at Morales. “Lemme tell you something that Rogers did tell me. Something I think about an awful lot, to be quite honest.”

“Go ahead,” Carter exchanges a look with Morales.

“If all that’s keeping a person decent is the expectation of some divine reward, then pal, that person is a piece of shit, make no mistake about that.”

Neither detective says a word, and Bucky can see them mulling over what he’s just said. Considering. Realizing.

. . .  
  


_2003 - Avoyelles Correctional Center_

  
“Why didn’t you tell us about Will Simpson?” Bucky slams his palms flat on the table in front of Alex Summers, who flinches.

“Look, man, you didn’t ask!” He looks thinner, like he’s been staying awake for a few nights. Bucky is viciously pleased about it. “He was my cellmate just before he got out. Big dude. Fuckin’ scary.”

“What else?” Bucky is losing his patience, while Steve just leans against the wall behind them, watching. “Goddammit, did he know Lorna?”

Alex looks away guiltily.

“She give me some polaroids, around the time I first got here. Stuff to help…ease the time, you know? Sexy pictures.” He twitches. “I shown ‘em to Simpson. It’s just what you do.”

“Tell me about Simpson,” Bucky says. “What was he like? What do you know about him?”

“He’s a big guy, alright? Scary, always talking about weird-ass shit. He got mad knowledge for cooking though, like, breaking down cleaners and cough syrup. Him and his cousin, they got a lab out in the middle of nowhere. He made shit inside that’ll get you fucked up, that’s a big deal in here. I don’t mess with him.”

“So, you two were friends?” Steve asks, not moving from the wall. “Shoot the shit like regular roomies?”

Summers shakes his head vehemently.

“Look man, I done told you. Motherfucker was weird as hell. Talked about some—some cult he was a part of, where they sacrificed children and women to some god or something. Always talking about this ‘Yellow King’ and ‘Carcosa' and 'hail Hydra.' I ain’t wantin’ to know him.”

Bucky glances at Steve, who gives the barest hint of a nod.

“You show him those pictures of Lorna, Alex?”

Summers starts to shake, his face going red.

“Will Simpson? Will. Simpson. Will- _fucking_ -Simpson did this? Did he fucking do this?!”

Steve comes off the wall, slow and lazy.

“C’mon, Buck.” He jerks his head in the direction of the door. “Let’s go. We got leads to follow up on.”

Bucky follows him through the door, but just as they’re about to signal the guards, Summers says, “Wait!”

He looks at Steve, his eyes pleading, and asks “You don’t…you don’t think that me showin’ Simpson those pictures got Lori killed, do you?”

Steve gazes levelly back at him, cold and calculating. He tips his head to the side a little.

“Probably, yeah. It probably had something to do with it.”

Then, he turns and starts down the hall, leaving Bucky to scramble after him, not wanting to see the broken ugliness of Summers’ face.

. . .

  
_Still 2003_

  
“You should invite Steve out with us,” Natasha says the next night, while she stands in the mirror applying lipstick.

They’re going to a bar called Longhorn’s, where there’s dancing, Bucky and Natasha and a couple of Natasha’s friends. It should be awkward, going out with your ex-wife, but it really isn’t. A lot of the time, they both forget they ever were married.

“Steve ain’t the social type,” Bucky says automatically. “I don’t really think he’d like Longhorn’s. Not really his scene.”

Natasha scoffs. “It’s not my scene, either. Or yours. We go there because it’s silly and fun, and because it’s not a total dive like most of the other bars around here.”

She’s right—they’re both from big cities originally, and Louisiana is still culture shock, even after all these years. Bucky hates it, sometimes. Most of the time he just tolerates it. He lives for his job, and everything else around him is just background noise. Filler.

“Come on,” Natasha prods. “Just call him. He’s lonely, James. I could see it all over him like it was written in sharpie.”

Bucky sighs, put-upon, but retrieves his phone anyhow, punching in the first letters of Steve’s name so the contact comes up.

The line rings four times before Steve picks up.

 _“Rogers,”_ he says, sounding groggy.

“Uh, yeah.” Bucky curses himself for doing this without thinking in through. “This is Barnes—Bucky. I was, well. Natasha and I are going out to this bar tonight, with a couple of others. Thought maybe you’d like to join us. You don't have to,” he adds. 

There’s a static-filled pause, and then _“Yeah. Okay. Just give me the address of the place.”_

Bucky does, and then they both hang up. He goes back into the bedroom, dazed, to find his ex-wife perched on the edge of the bed looking smug.

“He’s coming, isn’t he?” She pulls a slingback wedge onto her foot. “Told you.”

“This is gonna be a fucking disaster,” Bucky mutters.  
  


.  
  


Longhorn’s is dimly lit, with a large wooden dance floor at the center and a bar at the back. The floor not cleared for dancing is full of circular tables, and when Steve arrives, he spots Bucky and Natasha’s group easily.

There’s a tall woman with black hair and skin like new snow who glowers at Steve and shakes his hand with a crushing grip. Her name is Jessica Jones, and he learns that she owns a bar with her husband, the imposingly-large dark-skinned man next to her, whose name is Luke Cage.

They’re nice enough, and Steve likes Jessica. She’s quiet, and snarky, and he notices that she, like him, is forgoing alcohol. He wonders if she’s got a problem, too. Maybe people can sense it in others, when they’re near a kindred spirit.

“So, what brings you down here?” Jessica asks, muscles in her arm flexing involuntarily as she reaches for the water pitcher to refill her glass.

“Transferred from NYPD,” he says vaguely. “Needed a change of scenery, I guess.”

He thinks that maybe he should have shaved, should have worn something other than the shirt and pants he went to work in today. It’s too late for that, though, so he brushes the thought aside.

Bucky watches him for a long time, on and off throughout the evening. Even when Steve’s not talking, Bucky’s looking. It’s…unnerving. He doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean.

“You all catch that case out in Erath?” Luke asks, pouring himself and Bucky fresh beers. “Nasty piece of work that did that.”

Before Steve can reply, Jessica is clenching her jaw, a line appearing between her dark eyebrows.

“It’s that same sonofabitch who killed Trish,” she grits out, staring at the ice melting in her glass. “Motherfucking sheriff wrote it off as an accidental drowning, but you tell me, Detectives, you see those slices in her stomach? That look like an accident to you?”

Bucky is shaking his head, about to say something like we can’t discuss case details off duty, but Steve holds up a hand.

“Wait, wait. You knew Trish Walker? How?” He can’t help himself. He can’t shut off the part of his brain that is a detective. He needs to know.

Jessica laughs, a humorless sound.

“She was my best friend, growing up,” she tells him. “Then she started seeing that Simpson prick, got herself mixed up in drugs, and we didn’t talk anymore. Right before she—she called me. She was talking crazy, like, I could tell she was on something. She kept saying this word that didn’t sound real…”

“Carcosa?” Steve demands. “Was the word Carcosa?”

Jessica looks like she’s been slapped.

“Yeah,” she stares at him. “Yeah, it was. And ‘Hydra’, too. Do those words mean something to you?”

He looks at Bucky, whose eyebrows have travelled nearly into his hairline.

“Excuse us, guys,” Steve gets up, hoping Bucky will follow. “I’m just gonna go get another pitcher of water, maybe Bucky’ll grab more beer for the table. We’ll be back.”

They hustle out into the back alley, near the dumpster, and Bucky lights a cigarette which he smokes with a frantic kind of edge.

“Shit,” he spits. “Shit, Steve. What is this? This—this conspiracy bullshit? We keep hitting the same weird-ass wall, and I don’t like it one bit.”

The dumpster smells ripe in the heat, like rotten fruit and sour milk. Flies and mosquitoes can be seen in the glow of the streetlamp, buzzing near it and then away again. Steve wants a drink, if only to numb the senses that overwhelm him.

From inside the bar, music plays loudly, if a little muffled. The song that’s just started is one that Steve doesn’t know; he doesn’t know a lot of country songs.

“You think there’s something to it?” Bucky looks at him, hard, searching. “This king stuff? Carcosa, or Hydra, or whatever the hell? If you think there’s something there, Steve, you tell me right now.”

Steve stares at the shards of broken bottle on the asphalt a few feet away. They glow green under the lights, jagged and dangerous. He can smell Bucky’s cologne, and he wants to be closer to him. He wants to tear at his skin with his fingers, leave bruises with his teeth and hands. He wants them to consume each other. He needs a hit of something, something to calm himself down.

“It’s…” he looks away as he speaks, flush creeping hot and shameful up his neck. “It’s hard to say. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, hearing it brought up by a few different people now. It’s worth looking into, that’s for sure.”

Steve keeps thinking about what those words could mean. What’s the significance of any of it? Yellow king, is that some kind of deity, or just a street name for a new drug? Carcosa? That one rings familiar bells in the back of his brain, like he read it somewhere, but he can’t think exactly where. He’ll have to check up on that. Hydra, though, all he knows about that is from mythology. The legendary beast with the ominous warning that if one head should be cut off, two more shall take its place.

It’s all fucked up, the whole case. He knew, from the second they stepped foot into that cane field and saw Lorna Dane’s posed corpse, that it wasn’t going to be a normal procedural investigation. There are dark and vast minds at play here, and it chills him.

“You get anymore intel on Will Simpson?” He kicks a rock with the toe of his shoe, and it hits the side of the dumpster with a small clang.

Bucky slicks his hair back with one hand, looking tired.

“Haven’t heard back yet, but Wilson and Quill were working on it for me. Should have it by tomorrow.”

Steve doesn’t want to go back into Longhorn’s, but he doesn’t want to go back to his apartment, to the emptiness and the crime scene photos and the bad thoughts that all come pouring in when he’s alone.

“I should head out,” he says. “I don’t…I don’t know how to be around people, Buck. Those people, Natasha…her friends…I’ll just make things strange. Bad. I’ll just go.”

He turns to go, but Bucky grabs his arm, a gesture that surprises him into stillness.

“Wait,” he says, and he sounds slightly panicked. “Can I ask you something, Steve?”

Steve turns to look his partner in the face, and he sees a kind of fear there, childish and true.

“Of course, Buck.”

“Do you ever wonder if you’re a bad man? A bad person?”

Steve sighs wearily, wishing he had a better answer than the one he’s going to give. It feels old and rote, though he’s never spoken it aloud. Maybe that’s in part because he doesn’t fully believe it himself. Still, it’s something.

“I don’t wonder, Bucky,” he says tiredly. “I know. The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.”

And when Bucky loosens his grip on Steve’s arm, Steve walks away into the darkened gravel lot toward his pickup truck, the music fading little by little.

He doesn’t look behind him.

. . .

_2011_

  
“Which one of you two is the box man?” Bucky blows smoke out the corner of his mouth. “C’mon, you ain’t gonna tell me? Alright, I bet it’s you.” He gestures lazily with his cigarette at Detective Carter, who smirks just the smallest bit. Pleased.

“You and Rogers,” she says almost coyly. “Which of you was it? Kind of hard to get a read on either one of you, past the obvious exterior.”

It’s the first time either one of the detectives has mentioned speaking to Steve directly, but Bucky knows better than to react at all. Instead, he leans back in his chair, reminiscing.

“Oh, I was alright. I got plenty of confessions,” he almost smiles. “But Steve…man, you should’ve seen him. He was terrifying. It was a thing of beauty, watching him work a suspect without laying a hand on ‘em.”

“Can you tell us about any in particular? Any that he may have done while you worked the Dane murder?”

Bucky smiles, taking a slow drag on his smoke.

. . .

“It’s all right here,” Steve indicates his own eyes. “Everything you need to tell if a person is guilty or not, it’s in the eyes. I’ve never been in a room more than two minutes where I didn’t know whether the guy did it or not.”

Both detectives look grudgingly impressed; Steve doesn’t see the need to be humble about it. He knows his assist records. They speak for themselves. He’s not proud of it, usually, but he’s not ashamed, either.

“Everything about a person, it’s all going on up here,” he continues, slipping back into the familiar skin of the man he was back in ’03, ’04. “This… is what I mean when I talk about time, about death, about futility. Fourteen straight hours of staring at dead bodies, these are the things you start thinking about. You ever do that? You look in their eyes, even in a photograph, and you can read ‘em. You see this…this unmistakable relief. They saw, in those final nanoseconds, how easy it was to just…let go. To get out. They saw what they were, they realized that every single thing about themselves, their love, their pain, their hate, their memories, their whole life…It was all the same thing. All the same dream, a dream that you had in side a locked room, about being a person. And like a lot of dreams, there’s a monster at the end of it.” He stops, sits back in the chair. He didn’t realize that he still thought that way, after all this time. All the progress he’d thought that he’d made.

“Incredible,” Detective Carter murmurs, looking at him like he’s some kind of sideshow freak, or like a new species. Steve feels oddly exposed, like he’s just cut himself open and bared all his organs for them to scrutinize and label.

“It’s a locked room.” He laughs softly, looks away. “Then again, what do I know? I’m terrible at cards.”

Morales looks through some more papers, then glances up at Steve.

“There are a few things we’re a little fuzzy on, after you two got the beat on Simpson. Can you maybe clear them up for us?”

Steve ducks his head, tries to look bashful. He’s heard he can be pretty good at it.

“I’ll do my best, Detective, but I have to warn you—my memory hasn’t gotten any sharper since I left the force.”

“That’s alright,” Detective Carter assures him. “Just tell us what you know, and we’ll go from there.”

. . .

  
_2003_   
  


Will Simpson has no family left in the area. None that they can find, anyhow. Local gossip tells them that his family was once well-to-do—or his mother was, anyhow. She was an alcoholic, and abusive, and when Will was ten, she killed his father for having an affair with the girl who used to babysit Will. It was a nasty mess, as were most of the families they keep drudging up on this case. Bucky’s glad, not for the first time, that he’s got boring parents with boring lives.

They do find, though, a known associate of his. One Felix Grenier, with a record for statutory rape, drug possession with intent to sell, and a few petty charges. Felix’s mother hasn’t seen him around, or so she says.

Bucky and Steve go to a strip club with a bleakly flickering neon sign, and ask the manager if they can speak to a girl who works there, by the stage name of ‘Cherry’, Felix’s most recent ex.

She’s wearing a revealing halter-style bathing suit, tied only with strings in the back, and printed with the American flag. Her hair is teased up, big and loud, and she’s got some bruising on the skin inside the crook of her arm.

“You seen Felix lately?” Bucky shows her Felix’s unflattering mugshot. The guy has no neck, and white-guy cornrows. “Or do you know where he’s staying?”

Cherry shakes her head, primping in the mirror.

“Uh-uh,” she says emphatically, her accent thick as molasses. “I heard he was going around with Kelly Terry, and I kicked him out. Last I heard, he knocked up some bitch in Shreveport.”

Bucky gives Steve a look, a is she serious with this? sort of look, and Steve pulls out the pictures of Lorna and Trish.

“Look, it’s really important.” He holds up the pictures for her to look at. “Have you ever seen either of these girls? Even if it was just once, at a party or something?”

Cherry shakes her head, barely glancing at the photos, already turning on her six-inch platform stilettos towards the stage.

“I really wish I could help y’all,” she says insincerely “But I gotta get back to work. I’m sorry. I ain’t seen Felix, or those girls, neither.”

She leaves, clomping unsteadily in her ridiculous shoes, and Steve rolls his eyes at Bucky.

“You believe that?” He jerks his head in the direction Cherry just went.

Bucky snorts. “Like hell,” he says. “C’mon, I have an idea.”  
  


Steve follows him out to the car, content to let his partner take the lead. The wheels of his head keep turning, going through the motions. He’ll get there.   
  
.  
  


They sit at the bar, giving themselves a good vantage point of the whole club, and a grizzled bartender pours them warm beers with a grunt and a frown.

Bucky pays him, and then gestures toward the pole and stage where Cherry’s currently gyrating around. “Hey, that girl up there, she got a boyfriend?”

The bartender frowns more deeply, cleaning the inside of a smudged glass.

“What you wanna know that for? This ain’t that kinda place, mister.”

Bucky sighs in exasperation.

“You really wanna make me pull my badge? C’mon, man.” He shakes his head, like he can’t believe this. “I don’t wanna have to do that. Just tell me if she’s got an old man, that’s all.”

The bartender glares for a second, then shrugs.

“She does,” he says. “Short guy, goofy-lookin’ hairdo. He comes and picks her up, collects from her sometimes.”

So she’s got a pimp, then. That makes sense. She’s got a habit, even if it’s just a small one—that usually goes hand in hand with hooking. And after all, there aren’t many working girls without a pimp to keep them in line and keep them desperate.

“You seen him around lately?” Steve asks the bartender, sliding an extra ten across the bar’s sticky surface.

“Last week,” he takes the bill, folding it and sticking into his shirt pocket. “He come pick her up after her shift, but we threw him out. Busted him for tryin’ to sell Christi to the girls.”

Christi, one of the many street names for crystal meth. This bumps Felix Grenier up a little higher on their list, knowing that both Trish and Lorna had been full of meth when they died.

“But you don’t know where he hangs out,” Steve looks him in the eyes, looks for any trace of a lie. He doesn’t find any.

“Nah, man. I don’t mix with the girls and their boyfriends.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says, and the conversation is over.

They sit there awhile longer, Steve drinking tonic water and Bucky drinking beer, until Bucky sits up straight on his stool, the glaze gone from his eyes.

“Detective’s curse,” he says hurriedly, patting Steve’s arm. “Know what I’m talking about?”

Steve nods, unsure how this relates to their case currently.

“It’s when the solution’s under your nose, but you look everywhere else,” he says. “Why, what do you have?”

Bucky just grins.

“C’mon, we’ll wait in the car.”

. .

They wait for two more hours, until finally, Cherry’s shift ends and she slinks out into the parking lot, into a four-door with a crooked fender.

“I guarantee you she’s going to him right now, going to square up,” Bucky says, starting up the car. “We’re gonna follow her straight to the sonofabitch.”

. .

They follow her down several winding roads, out into the areas of old farms and shut-down factories, inhaling the damp, muddy night air through the open windows.

They drive in silence, both men wired and alight with the idea that maybe now they’re finally on their way to getting somewhere. It’s about forty-five minutes when they see Cherry’s car pull off onto a backroad, heading towards a warehouse that’s crawling with people.

It’s a rave, or something else that young, high people like to do, and Steve can see that Bucky is just as out of his depth here as he is. There’s comfort in that knowledge, at least. They agree to go in together, so no one can get the drop on them, and they push past all the strangely-dressed ravers, making sure they don’t lose eyes on Cherry.

She walks quickly through the throngs of dancing people, and the flashing lights and weird, thumping music is distracting, disorienting. Steve can smell their collective sweat so strongly that it’s like he can taste it. The bass notes are vibrating in his chest, shaking his heart against his ribcage, rattling his bones. It’s uncomfortable.

“There, Stevie, look!” Bucky shakes his shoulder, pointing in the direction of a small throng of tents in one of the rooms off to the side from the main factory floor. There’s a man, short and stocky, wearing a dirty track jacket and unfortunate cornrows. He’s taking a thick wad of singles from Cherry. He says something to her, and she nods, and goes into one of the tents. He heads off in the direction of another empty room, graffiti on the walls and rubble on the floor.

They see him unzip, facing the wall, and take their chance.

They’re out of their jurisdiction here, and they don’t have a warrant, but neither one of them cares. Bucky leads, walking straight up and cold-cocking the guy across the back of the head with his hand. He falls to the ground, and they corner him.

“Will Simpson, where the fuck is he?” Bucky is pointing his gun at Felix.

Felix looks nonplussed, like he can’t remember how to be scared, but he knows he should be. His pants are around his ankles.

There are a couple of people who peer around the corner into the room, but they scamper off when they see Bucky’s gun. The graffiti on the walls is poorly done, mostly just the street names of wannabe gangbangers and taggers. Steve scans them anyhow for some trace of something familiar. Black stars, maybe. Tentacles. Antlers.

“Look man, I don’t know no Will Simpson”—Bucky cocks the gun, his arm completely steady.

“Liar. Lemme ask you again, where is Simpson.” He’s not going to actually shoot this guy, Steve knows. Still, it’s jarring, to see this side of Bucky.

“Man, he stopped selling after he did his time. He don’t do distribution, only large batches for a single buyer. Only cooks for one group, now. Some biker gang based in Arkansas. Got a chapter here, though.” Felix is sweating, but his eyes are glassy. He’s clearly on something, something that’s blocking communication from his brain to his body. He’s still—physically, at least—mostly unafraid.

“What biker gang?” Steve is in his face now, demanding. He already knows the answer, but he needs to hear it. “What’s the name of the motorcycle club, asshole?”

“Relax, man!” Felix holds his hands up in front of his stout body. “It’s something like…weird, you know? Mutants…something like that, I don’t know.”

Steve smacks him with an open palm. It feels good, making contact with the man’s fleshy cheek. He has to clench his fist, fighting the urge not to do it again, this time harder.

“Don’t lie to me,” he grits through his teeth. “The name. Now.”

“Okay, _okay!_ ” Felix is starting to look as panicked as he should, now. He sits up a little. “They call themselves the Mutant Brotherhood. Scary dudes, man. Simpson got a brand on his back, like they do to cattle and shit. I don’t fuck with those people, man.”

Steve leans over to whisper to Bucky, low under his breath.

“That’s our in, Buck. Let’s go back to my place, I’ll explain when we get there.”

  
They leave Felix Grenier on the dirty cement floor, pants around his ankles, blinking dazedly.

. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“So, you get a lead on a suspect, the first big lead of the case, and you take a leave of absence?” Detective Carter looks highly suspicious, and Steve doesn’t blame her.

He wouldn’t believe it, either. It is, after all, a lie.

“That’s right,” he tells her. “Had to go visit my in-laws. Mother-in-law wasn’t doing so hot, and they were the closest thing I had to family left, so.” He shrugs, leaves it at that.

“You were really that close with them?” Carter sounds like she doesn’t buy it for a second. “You took a leave of absence right after the biggest break in your biggest case?”

Steve rolls his eyes up at the ceiling and sighs.

“Look,” he tells her. “I don’t know what else you want me to say. That I lied? That something other than what’s in your files happened? I hate to disappoint you, Detective, but I’m afraid I’m gonna have to.”

“Hmm,” Carter remains unconvinced. Steve looks at his nails, then picks at an imaginary piece of lint on the front of his jacket.

The camera’s red light blinks coquettishly at him, as if to say _liar, liar, liar._

. . .  
  


_2003_   
  


“You really wanna do this, Steve?” Bucky is sitting in a cheap folding chair that wasn’t here the last time he was at Steve’s, looking at the big lockbox Steve dragged out from in one of the closets at his apartment.    
  
It’s filled with things—drug paraphernalia, a leather jacket with a big patch on the back indicating loyalty to the Mutant Brotherhood, and enough guns to go on a one-man war spree. It’s unsettling, knowing that Steve has these things in the same place that he sleeps. Or, doesn’t sleep.

They’re talking about this crazy plan, to have Steve hook up with one of his old contacts from the gang, to go undercover and try and flush Simpson out. It’s risky, and they’ll have to bend into a lot of uncomfortable shapes, so to speak, just to keep everything running smooth. A kind of legal gymnastics, smoke and mirrors. Bucky’s not wild about the idea, but it’s all they’ve got.

“It’s our only shot,” Steve says, as if he can read Bucky’s thoughts. “And besides, my cover’s still good. As far as any of them know, I died back in ’01 in a raid by the DEA. I didn’t know they had a chapter down here, but I should have guessed. Too close to the Mexican border not to. It'll be easy to cook up some bullshit story about how I escaped and recovered elsewhere. And now I'm just looking to get back in the game.”

Bucky can’t picture it, a version of Steve Rogers in a leather jacket, doing illegal things in the name of justice. Steve shrugs off his button-down, standing there in his undershirt and jeans, and Bucky notices the tattoo on his forearm. It’s a five-pointed star, military-style, with wings on either side, like an Air Force insignia.

“They had a nickname for me,” Steve says, noticing him staring. “Cap—short for Captain. Said I acted uptight, like I was ex-military or something. I don’t miss being UC,” he shakes his head, then adds “But I sure miss that bike I had.”

Steve on a motorcycle. That’s an image Bucky needs to file away for later use. As is the one before him now; Steve’s shrugged the leather jacket on over his undershirt, and the effect it has is so striking that Bucky’s mouth goes a little dry.

Steve’s hair is buzzed fairly short, close to the scalp and darker than Bucky remembers it being. He wonders if it grew out, would it be more like that old golden blond? He’s also got more than a few days’ worth of beard. Bucky knows what he must look like right now, what his face must be giving away about himself, but he can’t stop looking.

Steve notices, and takes a step closer to the chair Bucky’s sitting in. The tension in the room instantly ratchets up, and though the air conditioning is cranked up, Bucky’s sweating through his shirt.

“See,” Steve says casually, taking another step, “This is the kind of thing that gives a guy mixed messages. You look at me like that, and I think that the answer is obvious. Then, you talk, and I second-guess it again. You gotta tell me, Buck.”

Bucky shakes his head, unable to form words, still looking up at Steve. Half of him wonders if this is even happening at all, or if it’s just a hallucination brought on by sleepless nights and too much wishful thinking. He digs his nails into the meat of his palm, hoping to shock himself out of it. No luck.

“All you gotta do is say the word, Buck,” Steve says, not once breaking their eye contact. “One word, either way, just so I know.”

It would be so easy, Bucky thinks, to just let himself have it. One night, and then they’ll never talk about it again. They’ll avoid each other except to work the case, and that will be that. No more of this…whatever this is. No more alternating between hate-staring and eye-fucking from across the room. Bucky wonders how long it’s been since Steve last got laid. No, the last time since Steve got _fucked_. He bets it’s a long time.

He wants this, good _god_ , he wants it so bad. Only thing is, he can’t let himself have it. Not yet. He knows, deep down, somewhere underneath all the hardened layers of nastiness he’s built up around his heart, that to do this now would mean to destroy everything. This is not the moment. The moment may come, or it may not, but he’ll just have to wait and see. He bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard. The sharp, sudden pain is enough to shake him back into himself a little.

“Not…” Bucky manages to say, stumbling over his own heavy tongue, “Not a no, but just…”

“…Not right now,” Steve finishes for him. He doesn’t seem too surprised by that answer, nor does he seem particularly bothered. He takes it in stride. “I understand. I won’t ask again. You just let me know when.”

He peels the jacket off, throws it back over the lockbox, and heads down the narrow hall to the bathroom.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Bucky,” he calls over his shoulder, and Bucky can’t move for a long time. He just sits there, staring at the half-wall that separates the kitchen nook from the rest of the room. He looks at it and looks at it, and wonders what the fuck just happened here.

When he hears the shower start up, he snaps out of it, like a man being woken from a trance. He makes himself get up from the cheap folding chair and walk the ten, twenty steps out to his car. Makes himself drive home, hardly blinking the whole way back.  
  


He’s so burnt out, so low from all the adrenaline spikes and crashes in the last couple of days, when his head hits the pillow, he’s out like a light. It's the first time in a month that he's slept the whole night through. 

. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“So, Rogers just up and left, right when y’all were getting your first real break in the case?” Morales is raising his eyebrows skeptically from across the table. “As far as we know, there are no records that Steve Rogers ever went back to New York during that time, nor are there any records indicating that his deceased wife’s parents even lived in the United States.”

Bucky doesn’t blink, doesn’t react.

“That’s none of my business,” he says easily. “S’what he told me, and he left. It sucked for the investigation, but that all worked out in the end, anyhow. Well, in a way.”

“The shootout at the meth-lab,” Carter says knowingly. “Tell us about that.”

“Either of you ever been in a firefight? No? Well then, how the hell am I supposed to explain what happened that day? You’re never gonna understand.”

He remembers the buzz of the flies and mosquitos as they trudged carefully through the tall grass. His whole body was tingling, running through with electricity. They were armed to the teeth, wearing camouflage and eyeblack, with radios for backup just in case they needed it. Bucky had been wary of getting cocky; they had agreed that they didn’t know what they were walking into. What they’d heard about Simpson and his partner, what they knew about meth-cookers on his pay grade, it was common sense to take precautions.

They could see the shack-like house in the distance, make out the shape of a man outside. The sharp, chemical smell was thick in the air, a toxic contrast to the field and the forest surrounding the property. The chimney was belching up clouds of foul smoke, meth being manufactured.

He sees the man in his memories like a monster, the way he wore only a pair of dirty white underwear, and a gas-mask on his face with a long hose attached. He had strange tattoos all over his body, and he walked like he wasn’t human. Like he was something else.

After what they found in that house, what they saw, Bucky’s never been sure if those men truly were human. How could humans do those things? Be that evil?  
  


But, if there’s one thing he knows to be true, it’s this: Hell is empty; all the devils are here.

 

 

 

Next up, Episode 4: Who Goes There....

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so so pleased that a few of you have left me comments and are reading this! I'm really having a good time writing it, as it's a totally different sort of genre of fic for me, and it's a big challenge! 
> 
> I'd love to hear more thoughts, so please leave me a note! I love hearing from people. 
> 
> And now, on to episode 4....already almost halfway through this fic! wow! 
> 
> <3


	4. Who Goes There

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2004 - Steve goes undercover with the Mutant Brotherhood, Bucky tries to hold it together 
> 
> 2011 - The Detectives try a different tack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for graphic violence in this chapter, and though I've censored the use of the N-word, I felt that it was important to the dialogue that I'm borrowing and modifying from the show (the motorcycle club is really gross and racist) but I just don't feel comfortable writing out the whole word.

  
_2004_

  
Steve starts preparing to assume his old UC identity, shooting small bursts of inking cayenne into the crook of his arm to make bruises blossom on the tender flesh there, to sell the idea that he’s still that person.

He pretends not to see the look on Bucky’s face when he does this at his kitchen counter, elbow resting on the cheap surface, leaned over with a clean syringe in hand. He notices that Bucky does not ask why he happens to have rubber tubing for wrapping around his upper arm, a makeshift tourniquet to ensure that a good vein be found.

Making contact with someone from his old chapter of the MB isn’t difficult—he’s got a connection who’s still in deep cover, Wade Wilson. Wade’s a crazy motherfucker, but he’s a good cop, and he’s one of the best at UC work that Steve’s ever seen.

 _“I can get you a meeting with a guy, runs with the East Tex chapter, goes by Toad. He’s a nasty little freak, but he’s your best shot.”_ Wade’s talking on a payphone—Steve can hear cars rushing by through the static. _“I’ll call you with the coordinates with a time, if he agrees to this. Fuck, I must be nuts.”_

“Thanks, man,” Steve says into the receiver. “I really appreciate it. Owe you one.”  
  
_“You know it. Catch you on the flip-side, hombre.”_ Wade hangs up, and the line goes dead.

Steve looks at the reddish-purple marks that now dot his inner-arm, and thinks about getting high. Instead, he busies himself with another part of the plan—obtaining some primo coke to get this Toad guy to talk deals.

There’s a stash in the evidence locker, at least five kilos worth, but all Steve needs is one. Maybe two. He’s got some evidence bags and tape that he took home from the precinct, and he sets to work dumping a half-bag of flour into it, securing the flap tightly with the red-lettered tape.

  
The next morning, he tucks it up the back of his shirt, hidden by his jacket, and asks the commander for the key. He obliges without looking up from his crossword, and Steve thinks that there really ought to be something more to this than just the honor system.

He knows just about how much honor there is to be found among cops.

Still, he looks over his shoulder before unlocking the metal cage-door and stepping inside, closing it behind him as he goes to find that box that he needs.

It’s near the back, and slipping the fake coke into the box while he puts the real kilo up the back of his shirt is too easy. Like palming a quarter without any real finesse. Two seconds, and the deed is done. He walks back out, locks the gate again, and heads back to return the key.

“There really oughta be a better system for this,” he says under his breath.

. . .

 __  
2004  
  


“I really appreciate it, Steve,” Natasha says, handing him lemonade in a tall glass. “James isn’t usually one to bother with yard work, and I’m busy a lot too, so…”

Steve takes a sip of the lemonade—tart and cool—and waves her off.

“Don’t—it’s no trouble, really. I don’t mind it. It’s…relaxing.”

Natasha laughs, and her smile is bright and beautiful.

“Mowing the lawn is relaxing? James is right, you are a strange guy,” she says, but she smiles so he knows that she’s teasing.

“Oh, I’m sure I’ve changed a bit since we knew each other,” Steve agrees, leaning somewhat awkwardly against the counter. “But, then again, do people really change?”

Natasha tilts her head at him, curious. She looks like she wants to say something, but is hesitating.

“Something on your mind?” He asks, raising his eyebrows.

“Nothing…” she looks away, biting her lip. “Except, you know him. Like, maybe better than anyone, right?”

Steve feels awkward and uncertain, and like he’s still 5’4 and 95 pounds.

“I don’t think that’s true anymore,” he says, switching the lemonade to his other hand and wiping his palm against his jeans. “It’s been a long time, and we…we’re different now.”

Natasha huffs, a sound somewhere between a laugh and something else.

“But you’re not,” she protests. “Not really. Okay, look,” she holds up her hands, as if she’s already asking for forgiveness for what she’s about to say. “I promise, this is the first and last thing I’ll say about it, but…”

“Jesus, Natasha, just spit it out,” Steve can’t help blurting, the tension in the kitchen now overwhelming.

“You know that James is—okay, the way I like to tell it is that he’s gay, but he made a past exception for me. You know he’s gay, right?”

Steve shouldn’t be so surprised that Natasha knows; after all, she was married to Bucky. She still lives with him. Why wouldn’t she know?

“He, uh, mentioned it, growing up,” he says noncommittally, thinking of that night in his bed, holding Bucky while he sobbed.

“What about you?” She levels him with an appraising eye, steely and unflinching. She must be a terror in court, Steve thinks.

“I like…” Steve trails off, thinking about it. He thought, at first, that he was gay. Then, he met Peggy, fell in love with her. He’s seen plenty of people, all different kinds of people, that he’s been attracted to. “I like people, I guess.”

“I thought so,” Natasha does look pleased, like she’s got a bet going on Steve’s sexual preferences. “I’ve seen the way you look at him, Steve.”

His first instinct is to deny it, even though he knows he’s not in any danger. But admission of guilt is dangerous, too. Admission of desires makes him just as human as anyone else, and that’s something Steve can’t afford to be, no matter how much he might want it.

“Looking’s just something to pass the time,” he says carefully, and is met with a flat stare.

“Have you ever thought about it?” She asks, knowing she doesn’t need to specify what ‘it’ is. “With him?”

“Natasha, this is hardly the kind of conversation I want to be having with my partner’s ex-wife,” he shakes his head, setting his half-empty lemonade glass on the counter.

“Humor me,” she says. “You’re both wound up so tight over this case, like you’re tied up in knots, I just think it’d do you good. Both of you.”

Steve nearly chokes on his own spit.

“You—you’re talking about—wow, I think I should go,” he trips over his words in a way he hasn’t done since he was a teenager.

“It’s just sex, Steve,” Natasha says dryly. “No need to get flustered.”

But it’s _not_ just sex, he wants to say. It could never be, not with Bucky. It would be either the beginning or the end of his whole life, and Steve just isn’t willing to take that leap. Not yet. He’s all fucked up inside, from the pills and Peggy and the shit he’s seen; he’s no good, and Bucky…he’s good. He’s still got something in him, a light that hasn’t gone out. Steve won’t, he can’t, be the one to take that away.

“Okay, but just—look, it doesn’t matter, alright? What I want, that doesn’t matter. Just because someone wants something, doesn’t mean they should have it.” He tries not to sound bitter when he says that last part, but a little bit sneaks through anyhow.

“What about what he wants?” She never breaks eye contact, arms folded over her chest. She’s in this cute, floaty floral-print sundress, but she might as well be dressed for court. Or battle. Steve makes a mental note never to piss her off. “Doesn’t he deserve to get something that he wants?”

Steve knows that Bucky…watches him. Catalogues his movements. Looks with a certain covetous sheen to his eyes that he can’t quite mask effectively all the time. There’s a tension there, between them, and it will reach a snapping point soon. Not yet, but soon. Steve likes to pretend that, by delaying the inevitable, he’s able to stop thinking about it altogether.

“Look, it’s—it’s complicated, there are, there are all sorts of factors to consider, and…”

“What, like the factor of you being a huge ass?” Natasha says bluntly. “You’re being an ass, all suffering and tortured. Anyone ever tell you it’s okay to be happy once in awhile?”

But just as Steve’s searching for an answer, Bucky comes home, and he’s clearly confused as to why Steve’s even here in the first place.

“He was doing the lawn,” Natasha explains sweetly. “It was starting to look like a jungle.”

“She exaggerates,” Bucky says to Steve, rolling his eyes. “You staying for dinner? I’m making alfredo.”

Steve is about to say ‘yes’, can feel it just on the tip of his tongue, but he stops himself.

“Ah, I would, you know,” he says, casting about for a lie “But I probably oughtta get home. Got a lot of prep-work to do for my,”—he almost says UC, but he catches himself—“My trip back to New York. Packing, that kind of thing.”

Bucky’s giving him a strange look, one that Steve can’t quite figure out, but he shrugs and sees him out, and that’s that. Steve tries to convince himself that he imagined the look of flat disappointment on Natasha’s face as he leaves.

  
On the drive back to his apartment, Steve realizes what Bucky’s facial expression meant—it was Bucky, figuring out that Steve was lying, and wondering why. He saw through the excuse, and was already connecting dots in his head, trying out theories.

He doesn’t have time for this, he thinks, closing his eyes and leaning against the door when he’s back home. He doesn’t get to do this, to indulge in frivolous thoughts like the ones he’s having now. It’s all so middle school; _‘Does he like me?’_ only now, they’re adults, so it’s more like _‘does he want to fuck me?’_

He jerks off in the shower, frantic and rushed, and tells himself that it’s enough.

. . .  
  


2011  
  


“When did your relationship with Detective Rogers become sexual in nature?” The question comes so out of nowhere that Bucky needs a moment to get his feet back under him.

He can’t say he didn’t know it would come, eventually—it’s just that there wasn’t any lead-in, Detective Carter just threw it at him like a fastball he wasn’t ready for.

He licks his dry lips, looks at the little man he’s made from the aluminum of one of his beer cans.

“Don’t see how that’s relevant,” he says blithely. “Don’t see how come you’d need to know that for your case files.”

Detective Carter smirks, and Detective Morales looks away, embarrassed.

“Something happened between the two of you in ’05, and then Rogers left the force. Humor us.”

Bucky grits his teeth, shakes his head slowly.

“You people are fuckin’ shameless, you know that?” He laughs humorlessly. “You drag my ass in here on a Thursday, which is my day off, and you ask me a bunch of bullshit questions under the guise of ‘replacing a lost file.’ Tell me, detectives, just how many brain cells you think I lost since I left the force?”

Neither of the detectives says anything, and Bucky sighs, a long stream of air, like he’s deflating.

“Anyhow, that stuff with me and Rogers,” he says quietly. “That didn’t happen for a little while yet. Not ’til after the cookhouse.”

. . .  
  


_2004 - Near the Louisiana-Texas border_  
  


“You sure you wanna do this?” Bucky asks for the tenth time, feeling more than a little stupid.

He’s agreed to wait in the truck, baseball cap pulled low, until Steve comes back out. Steve had told him that these guys, this Mutant Brotherhood, they smell a cop and they kill without hesitation. He seems so sure that they won’t make him, that they’ll just accept his old cover and welcome him into their greasy, crooked fold.

“It’ll be fine, Buck,” Steve replies, but his eyes are hollow and ringed with a bruised-sort of purple, and he’s got a hunted kind of look to him. It makes Bucky nervous, seeing him this way.

Steve goes inside the roadhouse, a loud and rowdy place with a whole slew of bikes parked out front, crawling with leather-clad men and women. There’s a difference in the way Steve walks, Bucky realizes, watching him make his way across the gravel lot. He’s loosened his hips a bit, let his shoulders relax a fraction. He looks like the kind of guy who belongs here, like he’s trouble. It shouldn’t make Bucky’s stomach twist and his blood flame with lust, but it does.

It’s boring, being the one waiting in the car, but Bucky knows he can’t go in there. He’s wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans, but he’s got short hair and he’s clean-cut, and he just shaved this morning.

He doesn’t belong in a place like this. Part of him resents that Steve can make himself belong, can morph so fluidly into this other man. The other part of him just wants this to be over. He’s got a bad feeling, though he tries to write it off as paranoia. Something just isn’t sitting right.

There are women with ripped and studded tank-tops on, cleavage spilling out as they lean over and bat their heavily-made up eyes at men with beards and bad intentions. People stagger in and out through the old-fashioned saloon doors, and Bucky’s pretty sure he sees at least five drug deals take place in the time he’s waiting.

He sees that Steve’s left one of his sketchbooks on the floor of the passenger’s side of the truck, and he’s tempted. For about twenty minutes, he debates the forgivability of sneaking a look, and tells himself that he isn’t going to. He knows he’s stalling, though. He knows he’s going to do it.

Leaning over, he grabs it from the floor, and turns to a page somewhere in the middle.

The drawing isn’t of a crime scene, like Bucky had been expecting—this is rendered in soft, spidery lines with only the faintest ghost of shading. It’s done in pencil, but it’s so alive, like it could move on the page.

It’s a tree, fully-leafed and twisting with branches and vines. There aren’t any devil traps in its boughs, and it doesn’t look like the tree they found Lorna Dane posed against. It’s just a tree. A drawing of a tree shouldn’t make Bucky feel so shaken, so off-kilter.

He turns a few pages, looking but not really seeing, until he stops on a familiar face. His own.

He’s there, in pencil, nearly photographic except for the criss-crossed lines and smudges of graphite that give it away. It’s Bucky’s face, as he looks now, from the front, and in profile, and smiling, and staring. There are several pages of himself, including one unfinished sketch that’s just his lips and his jaw and his neck.

It’s…strange. Surreal. Maybe Bucky should be more disturbed by it than he is, but right now all he can think of is the fact that Steve watches him closely enough to draw these. He’s not stupid—he’s a detective, for christ’s sake—and he knows what it looks like when someone’s looking at a subject through a certain lens. In this case, it’s the lens of desire, whatever form that might take. There’s no mistaking it, it’s there plain as day. Bucky gets the distinct sensation in his stomach that one gets when they’ve gone snooping where they shouldn’t. He knows he won’t be able to forget what he’s seen, though he lays the sketchpad back on the floor in its original position. He knows that, now, every time he sees Steve’s pencil moving against paper, he’ll wonder. _Is he drawing me?_

It’s enough to keep his brain busy while he waits.  
  


. . .  
  


_2011_  
  


“So, Mr. Rogers,” Detective Carter looks frazzled. She looks like she hadn’t planned for these interviews to be so frustrating, but Steve figures that’s not his problem. “You really weren’t in the state of Louisiana at all for that two week period?”

Steve sighs, the lie coming to his tongue so easily, rote and tired. “I promise, Detective. I was visiting with my in-laws.”

“Hm,” is all she says in reply.

. . .  
  


_2004_

  
Steve knocks on the door, and a panel slides away to reveal someone’s bloodshot eyes.

“Cap, here to see Toad,” he tells the eyes. There’s a beat, then the panel slides back into place and the door opens.

Steve steps in, making sure not to swagger too much or too little, and he’s led by a man with a ratty blond beard through the clubhouse, the sweaty mass of bikers and the girls who drape themselves over them.

The floor is sticky with spilled beer, and some kind of guitar-heavy music is blasting from the stereo.

Steve doesn’t need any help figuring out which one of the men he’s standing in front of is Toad—the guy is maybe 5’7 with boots on, and he has a strange, squashed-down face that makes him look exactly like what he’s nicknamed after. His hair is shaved in a short mohawk, and he wears dark sunglasses even though it’s dim inside.

“Heard about you,” he says, nodding at Steve. “You from up in NYC, yeah? Heard you died.”

Steve shrugs, offers the barest hint of a smirk.

“I look dead to you, man? Nah…I been in Canada. Couple of guys got me over the border, and I got patched up. Laid low.” The cover story rolls off his tongue, easy as the truth, but with a better high than truths ever bring. “Eventually, I came out of hiding, traveled down the East Coast, then cut across to Texas and down to Mexico.”

“Yeah, Deadpool mentioned that,” Toad says, and it takes Steve half a second to realize he means Wade Wilson. “He also mentioned you’s working for some guys from down there, ex-Mex Army? Said you were looking to make a deal with us.”  
  
“That’s right,” Steve agrees. “I’m reppin’ some people. They want to do a swap, coke for crystal, and let me tell you, this shit I got—it’s top fuckin’ shelf.”

His accent is all Brooklyn right now, and he can see from the set of Toad’s jaw that it’s working like a charm. It shouldn’t give him a bubbly jolt of adrenaline, being so close to the alligator pit, as it were. He obsesses over this high, though. Craves it. Spends so much time trying not to want it, that he just makes himself want it more.

“You got any product on you?” Toad quirks his head, and Steve half-expects him to try and catch a fly with some kind of mutated frog tongue. “Sample, like.”

Steve pulls some of the coke out from his jacket, wrapped in a plain bag and stripped of its identifying evidence tape. He cuts open one corner, and scoops up a bump with his knife. He offers the knife to Toad, who takes the bump with gusto.

It knocks him back several steps, and he grins wide and wild, showing oddly gapped teeth.

“Well shit,” he says to Steve, rubbing his hands together. “You weren’t fucking around.”

Steve hands him the rest of the 8-ball.

“Keep it, there’s more where that came from,” he says. “It’s like I told you; this shit’s pure. Step on it five, six times, it’ll still kick.”

Toad nods enthusiastically, but he motions for Steve to come closer, obviously not eager to be overheard by other club members.

“Look, I’m all for this, but you gotta do something for me, reciprocal, feel me? Gonna need to know you ain’t no pussy-ass motherfucker tryin’ to fuck me and the club over,” Toad says. “I ain’t knowing you, brother. You got a patch on your jacket, and Deadpool vouched for you, but I still ain’t knowing you.”

Steve doesn’t like where this is going, but it’s too late to do anything now but nod.

“What’s it gonna take to get me a meeting with your cook?”

Toad lifts his sunglasses, and his eyes are just as odd as the rest of his squat little face.

“Got a job, need more bodies. Fuckin’ n*****s in the projects got money that belongs to us, we gon’ get it back.” He looks the way all twisted people look when they talk about doing something ugly. It makes Steve’s skin crawl.

“I don’t really do that shit anymore, too messy,” he says, and Toad frowns.

“Look, man, you back me on this, I back you. You want a meeting with that cook or what?”

Steve wants to get out of here, but it’s too late, too late, too late.

“In and out, right?” He meets Toad’s watery stare dead-on.

“In and out, my man. Let’s get you in with the other guys, get this going.”

Steve almost panics for a second, remembering the truck, and Bucky inside.

“I got my truck, should I just follow you there?” He tries to sound casual, easy. He manages, but only just.

“It’ll be safe here,” Toad says, already leading him through the throngs of drunken bikers out a back door. Steve thinks about Bucky, alone in the truck, police scanner on and radio set to Steve’s channel. He closes his eyes, scrunches them shut for a few seconds, and everything sharpens again.

  
. . .

_2004 - Bucky  
_

Bucky sees Steve leave with a short, ugly man in a leather jacket, and he feels his gut twisting. Whatever’s happening, it can’t be good. It’s not part of the plan.

He pulls out of the lot as stealthily as he can, making sure to give the car enough of a head-start so his tail won’t look obvious.

These backroads are treacherous at night, and he’s got to keep his eyes wide open for twists and turns and unexpected potholes.

They drive for an hour or so, until Bucky can see up ahead that Steve’s exiting the vehicle in front of an auto mechanic’s garage. There are bikes parked outside, so it must belong to the club. The sick feeling in Bucky’s stomach doesn’t go away; it doubles. He pops an antacid from the roll he finds in Steve’s cupholder, and waits.

He doesn’t like this, this not knowing.

He doesn’t like not being able to watch Steve’s six, to have his back in this. It’s maybe what feels worst of all.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_  
  


“Can you describe for us the events of what occurred that day at the cookhouse with Will Simpson and Brock Rumlow?” Detective Morales’ morale is clearly starting to flag, and Bucky wonders how long before they call it a day for this interview session.  
“I’m getting to that,” Bucky shoos him with a hand. “Thought you wanted to hear about the Dane case details, that shit.”

Carter nods. “We do,” she says, “But we want to hear about the shootout. It’s something that’s…call it professional curiosity.”

What Bucky wants to call it, in the privacy of his own mind, is a load of bullshit, but he keeps that to himself.

“You ever hear about moral alignments?” He changes the subject, not because he’s avoiding the subject of those kids and that cookhouse way out in that field. Not because of that. “Like, someone being a Lawful-Evil, or a True-Neutral, and all that.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Morales says. “They say True-Neutrals make the best judges in court. Probably not very many of them really exist.”

“Right,” Bucky nods. “You know what a Chaotic-Good is, then, yeah?”

Morales tilts his head, like he’s not sure where this is going.

“It’s someone who…who bends the rules and breaks laws in favor of doing what they perceive to be the right thing. Someone who might commit a crime for the greater good,” he says. “We learned about it in a Psych course I took. Professor explained it like this: ‘Imagine your best friend, or whoever you love in the world most, had a rare form of cancer, and the only way it could be treated was this medicine that was only at one drug store in the world, and they couldn’t get it because of their insurance or the cost or whatever. If you’d go steal it for your friend, then you’re most likely a Chaotic-Good.’ Did I get it?”

Bucky smiles, and the chapped corners of his mouth crack a little.

“Got it. That’s not a bad way of explaining it,” he chews the skin around his thumbnail. “Know who’s a Chaotic-Good?”

Carter and Morales exchange yet another look, then, Carter raises an eyebrow.

“Was it Steve Rogers, by any chance?” She asks.

“Got it in one,” Bucky agrees, grinning. “Boy, you two really are a dynamic duo.”  
  


. . .  
  


_2004 - Steve_  
  


“So, the plan is, we go in as pigs,” Toad says gleefully, handing Steve a uniform. “Hold them n*****s hostage, get the cash, get out. It’ll be cake.”

Steve’s regret is so fully-formed, it could probably go off and start a sentient life of its own now. There’s a guy duct-taped to a chair in one corner who belongs to the rival crew, a dark-skinned guy who’s clearly been worked over a number of times; his lip is busted, and one of his eyes is starting to swell painfully. He cusses them out when they ask him where his crew stashes their shit.

“That’s it, that’s the whole plan?” Steve can’t help voicing his skepticism. “What happens if the real cops show, then what?”

Toad looks flatly at him, and a few of the other guys who are working the job give him sour expressions.

“We run into trouble, we fuck it in the ass,” Toad says, and the rest of the men laugh. “Besides, this fuckin’ n*****’s gonna tell us exactly where the rest of his little faggot friends are, so it’ll be over before you know it.”

Steve laughs, too, but more so to hide the fact that he’s wishing like hell that he hadn’t gotten himself into this.

As soon as he got in the door here, they pressed a pipe into his hand and made him take a long sucking draw. Meth, cut with something else, something they wouldn’t tell him what. They’d done some more coke, too, Steve’s nostrils are still burning, like he snorted rocket fuel. His vision is starting to go all distorted, and his blood is pumping so loud that it’s in his ears like bass drum. He’s struggling with every inch of himself to stay as alert as he can, to not lose sight of what’s at stake.

Everything about this is so fucking bad, from the racist pieces of shit he’s on this job with to the fucking corner he’s painted himself into, and a not-so-small part of Steve sort of hopes he gets killed tonight. He might probably deserve it.

They load up into a car, and Steve’s not sure, but he thinks he sees Bucky in the truck, parked on a nearby corner.  
  


When they get to the neighborhood, bunch of track houses with shit in the yards, Steve does another bump of coke, just because. It burns, worse than a punishment, and he doesn’t want Bucky to see him like this. Not tonight, not ever.

One of the guys hands Steve an assault rifle, and he’s still got his service weapon in his back holster, and he can feel how poorly this has the potential to go.

He follows Toad’s lead, storming into the house—a cop pretending to be a biker pretending to be a cop; it’s a strange life he leads—and holding its occupants at gunpoint.

Steve goes from room to room, shouting over his shoulder for the people just to cooperate, so no one will get hurt. In one bedroom, he finds two little boys, their eyes wide and uncertain.

“Get in the tub,” he tells them, pointing toward the bathroom. “Close the curtain, and lock the door, and lay down in the tub until someone comes to get you.”

They do as he says, and he tries to put their little faces out of his mind. Tries to forget that one or both of his parents are likely in this house, possibly about to die.

The house reeks of pot smoke, and the carpet is stained with various unfortunate spills and burns. Toad is holding one man with a gun to his head, and Steve’s vision blurs for a few seconds.

He blinks several times, trying to get his balance, all the while shouting “In and out, Toad, in and out. We just wanna get this done, and get the fuck out of here.”

But it doesn’t go like that.

One of the guys in the house has his own gun, and he shoots on of the Mutant Brotherhood men. After that, it’s like chaos erupting from a rift in space and time. Everything is muffled, like there’s no sound, and in the shadow of Steve’s druggy haze, it’s like a strange, awful dream.

He knows he’s shouting, but he doesn’t hear it. He knows the woman is screaming, her mouth stretched in a grotesque ‘O’. He comes up behind Toad, getting his arm right up against his throat, and holds his handgun to Toad’s squishy jaw.

“Change of plans, motherfucker,” he says, and starts to walk them through the rooms and out a backdoor.

“Hey, man, what the fuck,” Toad doesn’t struggle much, for as much as he swears and carries on.

“I swear to god, I will fuck you up, don't move except for your scrawny legs.” Steve keeps walking, half-crouched, as gunshots ring out into the night.

Something in the one house has caught fire, likely a gas burner on the stove that was left on, or a gas-line being hit with a stray bullet. Steve does not think of the little boys in the tub. He and Toad run, for what seems like hours, across yards and over fences. Steve grabs his walkie and radios for Bucky.

“Shit went south, we gotta get out of here,” he pants into the walkie.

“Way ahead of you, pal,” Bucky replies, staticky but relieved. “Heard it on the scanner, they’re sending SWAT over here, we have to haul ass just to miss ‘em.”

Steve kicks Toad in the leg, punches him viciously in the gut.

“You heard my partner,” he hisses. “Now move, you slimy piece of shit.”

  
When he’s got Toad cuffed and thrown in the backseat of the truck, Steve slides in the front passenger’s side, and Bucky hits the gas and they peel away, tires screeching.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky says, his voice edging on manic. “Fuck, Stevie. This is— _fuck_.”

“The good news,” Steve tells him breathlessly, “Is now we’ll definitely get that meeting with Simpson, isn’t that right, Toad?”

Toad groans from the backseat.

“Fuck you, man, shoulda known you were a fuckin’ rat faggot.”

Steve turns around in his seat, twisting so he can hold his gun to Toad’s head.

“Remember that meth contact now?” He doesn’t care how he must look, not even with Bucky next to him.

“You motherfucker!” Toad whines, clutching at his stomach where Steve had kicked him.

“You give me a location for Simpson, I’m gonna let you slide, Toad,” Steve says, more calmly than he feels by a long shot.

“Bull _shit_ ,” Toad spits, and Steve fights the urge to crack him against the side of the face with the barrel of the gun.

“What the fuck you think I want with you, huh?” He stares at the short, greasy little man in his backseat, breathing heavily. “Oh, goddammit, I am so done talking to you like a man.”

He hauls off and punches Toad, knuckles making satisfying contact with bone. Behind the wheel, Bucky says nothing. He looks, to Steve, like he’s trying not to look as buzzed as he is.  
  


He looks, to Steve, like someone who is reluctant to let himself feel the adrenaline high that comes with getting away with something like this.  
  


He looks, to Steve, like he’s wired with his own relief. Relief can, in its own way, be just as much of a rush as danger.

  
. . .  
  


The bar Simpson chooses for the meeting is off the beaten path—way off. It’s the sort of place that doesn’t see many people who don’t already know it’s there.

Simpson is in a booth with his partner, some cousin Rumlow or whatever, and Steve hopes like hell that Toad won’t do anything stupid, like blow Steve’s cover.

“What’s this about, Toad?” Simpson doesn’t even look at Steve; he stares up at the shorter man, his eyes glassy and strange. He looks like he’s spent a long time inhaling noxious fumes, like they’ve fucked with his brain.

The other guy has dark hair, and a smattering of prison tattoos on his bare arms. He’s short, where Simpson is a huge, beast of a man. He hardly fits in the booth.

“Buddy of mine, NY chapter of the Brotherhood, looking to deal,” Toad says tersely, sliding into the booth first. He’s got a nice, purple shiner, courtesy of Steve the other day.

“What happened to your face?” The one called Rumlow asks with a sneer.

“Tried to pick up the wrong fucker’s girl,” Toad mumbles, looking at the wall.

“Why am I here?” Simpson finally turns his unnerving gaze on Steve. He looks, with his dirty blond hair and massive shoulders, like a guy who played college football in another life.

“I’m here, reppin’ some people from Mexico. Coke for crystal, one big order. There’s money to be made,” he says coolly, ready to offer some more of the evidence room cocaine if need be.

“I have no need for it,” Simpson says after a long pause during which he just stares at Steve.

The weird way that Simpson is condescending to him, it irks Steve. He leans forward on his elbows where they rest on the table.

“What, money don’t spend?” He cocks an eyebrow.

“I can see your soul at the edges of your eyes,” Simpson says, not answering about the money. “It’s corrosive, like acid. You got a demon, and I don’t like your face. Makes me wanna do things to it.” He points at Toad. “I see you again, I’m gonna have words with the boss.” He turns back to Steve. “If I see you again, I’m puttin’ you down. There’s a shadow on you, son.”

He gets up out of the booth, towering over them for a moment, then he shuffle-stomps across the creaky wood floorboards toward the door. Rumlow gives them a nasty parting smile and follows suit.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve says aloud, and then uppercuts Toad just because he can.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_  
  


“So, you all get the beat on Simpson and Rumlow, and all of a sudden Rogers is back in town, just in time?” Carter sounds like she thinks the story’s a load of bull. Probably because she’s a good cop, and because it is a load of bull.

Bucky slouches in his seat, trying to get comfortable.

“Hey, listen—when you’re working a case like this, you don’t want someone else to get the collar, okay? It’s—it’s personal. It becomes personal. And I don’t mean that in some 'white-male-lead-tortured by the job-suffer in silence' type of way, either.” He flicks his lighter on, and off. On, and off. “I mean that you become so invested, it would kill you to let someone else see it through. That’s what I mean.”

Carter looks a little more satisfied with that explanation, but Morales doesn’t seem sure.

“That’s why Rogers came back?” He asks, twiddling his pencil. “To make sure nobody else got the collar on Simpson?”

Bucky exhales sharply out his nose.  
  
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, pal.”  
  


. . .  
  


_2004_  
  


They’re in a diner—not a truck stop, not a bar, but an actual diner. With normal people, eating their food and minding their business. It’s a breath of fresh air.

“So, he’s gonna show us where this cookhouse is?” Bucky asks, holding his double cheeseburger halfway between the plate and his mouth. “You sure he’ll talk?”

Steve’s dumping hot sauce on his fries, getting them all soggy with it. Bucky watches, mesmerized and a little disgusted, as he then proceeds to pick up his plastic fork and scoop up bites of the hot-sauce-soaked fry mess.

Bucky’s jittery, all wired with anticipation. They’re close, he can feel it. Like a humming in his bones, like pressing the flat of his tongue to a 9-volt battery. This case has been…intense. It’s been confusing, and frustrating, and it might actually be close to ending—for them, at least. They can hand it over to the D.A., agree to testify on the stands if needed, and wash their hands of the whole messy, unsettling sprawl of a case.

Truth be told, Bucky can’t wait for this fucking thing to be done with. It’s been keeping him awake at night, and infiltrating his dreams when he does manage to fall asleep. The whole damn thing is insidious that way, a heavy black fog rolling in low and making it impossible to see. He doesn’t like knowing that there are people who do things like this to other people. Even if it’s his job to know it. Maybe especially because of that.

“He’ll talk,” Steve says, sounding certain.

He’s got this set to his jaw, a look in his eyes. It’s one that Bucky knows well, nearly better than his own reflection. Steve Rogers’ determined face could launch a thousand ships, Bucky thinks.

Changing the subject, mostly in an attempt to ease the roiling in his gut, he jokes “So, what are you gonna do when we close this case? Take a vacation?”

Steve smiles, ducking his head a little, and the shadows under his eyes nearly vanish completely.

“Probably sleep for a week,” he says, reaching for his drink. “What about you, got any plans?”

Bucky wants to crack another joke, but he’s momentarily distracted by Steve’s lips wrapped around the plastic straw of his soft drink. Those red-red lips, the lower one fuller than the top. It empties his head of all coherent thought for several seconds.

“Uh,” he stutters, coming back to himself. “I dunno yet, probably the same. Maybe I’ll go see my sister in Iberville. She’s got two kids now.”

“Shit,” Steve shakes his head. “Two? Little Becca has kids? What are their names, how old?”

Bucky could kiss Steve for not asking about the kids’ father—a deadbeat who drank all day, treated Becca like shit, and took off a little after the youngest, Charlie, was born.

“Amity’ll be six this August,” he reaches for his wallet, for the faded pictures of his nieces that he keeps in one of the pockets. “And Charlie—that’s Charlotte, properly—just turned two. They’re trouble.”

He hands the photos to Steve, watches his smile go a little softer around the edges.

“They’re perfect,” he says earnestly, looking a moment longer before passing it back across the table. “Beautiful kids. Definitely Barneses,” he adds with a grin.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, feeling mushy all of a sudden. “Yeah, they are. I really should make time to see ‘em more, but, you know how it goes.”

He immediately regrets it, remembering that Steve has no family, and his unborn child died in a car wreck along with its mother. Fortunately, Steve doesn’t seem fazed. His knees bump Bucky’s under the table, and neither one of them makes any effort to move.

“Hey,” Bucky says suddenly, getting an idea. “Come with me, Becca would love to see you. She was always giving me shit for losing touch with you after we moved.”

Steve’s face lights up for a second, one bright, beautiful second of unfiltered happiness, like he can’t believe he’s being offered such a thing. But, as quickly as the expression comes, it’s gone.

“You think she’d want to see me?” He sounds so uncertain, so small.

Bucky manages a smile, inwardly hating himself for letting Steve go so long in this world feeling like he’s not worth a damn. He should have been there, for everything that came after the move. He should have…

“She’d probably rather see you than me,” he tells Steve, kicking at his shin under the table. “Wait’ll she sees how big you got, I swear, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

Steve’s smile returns, smaller and more subdued, but definitely there. He shifts in his seat, and Bucky feels the sharp nudge of Steve’s shoe against his own shin.  
  


It’s something, Bucky guesses.

  
. . .  
  


_2011 - Natasha Romanoff Interview #1_  
  


“Can you tell us anything about the relationship between Steve Rogers and James Barnes during the time they were partnered up?”

Natasha has taken time out of her busy schedule as the District Attorney to be here, and she’s annoyed as all hell. You can be sure, though, that none of that shows on her face. Her face is as calm and tranquil as still water.

“I assume you mean, did I know they wanted to fuck each other stupid?” She allows herself to enjoy the surprise that flashes across the detectives’ faces at her frankness. “Yes, I was well aware of that. I can’t imagine you called me away from my job just to ask me about my ex-husband’s sex life seven years ago.”

Carter snorts.

“You don’t pull any punches,” she comments. She’s pretty, Natasha thinks idly; blonde hair cut to her shoulders, dark eyes, good bones. She wonders if Detective Carter swings that way. “We were hoping to ask you about your ex-husband’s behavior during that time, and also about the events leading up to his falling out with Mr. Rogers?”

Natasha folds her hands, her perfectly buffed nails shining under the bad interview room lighting.

“You want me to, essentially, sit here and give you the dirt on a private, personal relationship that a man I was no longer married to at that time, was having with someone else? Because, I assure you, Detective Carter, James didn’t talk shop with me. I didn’t discuss my cases with him, and he didn’t discuss his with me. I couldn’t tell you a thing about that case from ’04, other than what I saw on the news. If you’re looking for someone to dish about James and Steve, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

There’s a pause, during which the detectives swap a series of looks which assumably convey what they don’t want to say out loud. Then, they turn back to Natasha, two pairs of brown eyes fixed on her.

“So, you _did_ know they were having a physical relationship, then?” Morales asks, pencil poised against his yellow legal pad. “Did Barnes’ behavior change after he and Rogers became…involved?”

Natasha wants to smack her head against the table. She’s got meetings in an hour, and a work dinner at some swanky restaurant she doesn’t want to go to.

“We understand that you’re married to another former officer, a Clint Barton, ma’m?” Carter asks, and Natasha kicks herself for not blowing this off.

“Yes,” she says through gritted teeth. “Clint and I have been married for five years. How is this relevant?”

“Just making sure we have all the details, ma’am,” Morales assures her.

Natasha fantasizes about punching him in the jaw.

 

 

 

Up next: Episode 5. The Secret Fate of All Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you're thinking! 
> 
> I know the Stucky is really slow burn, but it's coming. It's going to be really explosive, so I'm trying to let the tension build up a LOT for that. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit shorter, mostly because there's only so much action you can write down in words without visuals. Next one should be 10,000+ like the others :D
> 
> <3
> 
> ALSO I've got a playlist up on Spotify for this fic! Listen here: 
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/jordanondine/playlist/2P5I9z1qlNaJKvnTywi0Cv


	5. The Secret Fate of All Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2004 - Steve and Bucky get their men--or do they? 
> 
> 2011 - Carter and Morales think they've got it all figured out.

  
_2004_   
  


_“Buck, you got him?”_ Steve’s voice is muffled over the cellphone. _“You fuckin’ better, the shit I’ve been through.”_

Bucky scowls at the ahead of him.

“I do,” he says. “I got him. We’re on empty roads, now. I gotta drop back, or he’ll spot the tail.”

There’s static, and then Steve exhales.

_“Okay. That’s Simpson’s cook partner, Brock Rumlow. Birddog him, Bucky.”_

Bucky grits his teeth, presses down on the gas pedal a little harder.

“You got it, pal.”

 _“What’s your location?”_ Steve asks.

Bucky checks a sign as he passes it.

“Just south of I-10 along the Creole Nature Trail, heading towards Carlyss.”

 _“Hurry up,”_ Steve tells him.

“Roger that,” Bucky replies, smirking. “Get it? Because your last name’s…”

 _“Fuck you,”_ Steve laughs, then hangs up.

.

“How we doing back there, Toad?” Steve calls cheerfully to the duct taped man on the floor of his backseat.

“Fuck you, motherfucker!”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Steve smiles to himself, keeps watching the road.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_

  
“So, how’d you get onto Simpson, again?” Carter asks.

“One of Steve’s old informants tipped him off to the location of his cookhouse,” Bucky says vaguely. “So he came back on the job.”

Morales looks like he’s tired of this whole thing.

“Didn’t want anybody else to catch him, bring him in?”

Bucky sighs. “Look, you want my help, or don’t you? Just show me the rest of the file.”

Detective Carter frowns. “You know we can’t do that. Why are you so hot to see the new discovery file, anyway?”

Bucky flounders for a second.

“Well, why are you…so…hot to not give it to me?” He retorts. “It’s supposed to be like a consultation, right?”

Morales gives him a flat, unimpressed look.

“Yeah, but, you go first,” he says. “You take us through this, and then we’ll let you see what we’ve got.”

Bucky looks at him, long and hard, through narrowed eyes.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he says.  
  


. . .  
  


_2004_   
  


Bucky tails Brock Rumlow for two hours, far out into no-man’s land, until his car disappears down a dirt road, walled in by tall cane on either side. A few minutes later, Steve pulls up in the truck, parking next to Bucky’s Crown Vic.

“Where’s Toad?” he asks.

“Wrapped up in a ditch,” Steve snorts. “What’d you get?”

Bucky kicks at some dirt, watches it blow away on the hot breeze.

“Well, lost him, then had to double back a few times until I found the exit. That’s his truck there,” he nods over at the beat-up Ford.

“Hm,” Steve replies.

“We gotta call it in,” Bucky says, but he knows the words sound hollow, like he’s just saying them because he knows one of them ought to, and it sure as hell isn’t gonna be Steve.

“Nah…” Steve looks into the distance, squinting a little. “We don’t wanna do that. Troops will come, flood these woods. They could scatter. We call it in, we risk spooking ‘em, maybe they get away. We gotta do this now, Buck, while they’re unaware.”

About a half-mile in the distance, at the far end of the field in a clearing just at the edge of a dense wood, there stands a ramshackle house, single-story, with a roof that’s missing most of its shingles.

Bucky sighs, resigned.

“Alright. Fine.”

.

“There’s no way these fuckers don’t have this place boobytrapped,” Bucky grits through his teeth, loading his weapon and replacing it in its holster. “We gotta be careful, Steve.”

They’re stomping through tall, dry grass, getting eaten alive by mosquitos, and Bucky’s stomach is doing unruly flips.

“Look,” Steve says. “We find the place, we come back here, we call it in. One of us stays surveillance, yeah?”

“I can live with that,” Bucky decides aloud.

“C’mon then,” Steve crouches down a little. “Let’s go.”  
  


. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“Barnes got a tip about where Simpson cooks, and you came back from wherever you were.” Morales reads off his notepad, looking like a man prepared to meet with a brick wall.

Steve sighs.

“You knew it was going to get here, Mr. Rogers,” Detective Carter says, almost sympathetic. “Just tell us the once, the way you tell it.”  
  
“I’ll tell it the same way I told the shooting board and every cop bar between Houston and Biloxi.” Steve looks her square in the eye. “You know why the story is the same, every time, even seven years gone?”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Because,” Steve continues flatly. “It only went down the one way.”

. . .

  
_2004_

  
“The clearing’s probably mined,” Steve remarks. “How do you want to do this?”

It feels like it takes hours to get within range of the house, and they manage to sidestep several traps that have been laid out; trip wires, a bear trap, even a hidden pit trap. These men are dangerous, unpredictable. Bucky’s hands want to tremble, but he doesn’t let them.

Instead, he watches the broad expanse of Steve’s back, sweat darkening the collar and between his shoulder blades through his t-shirt. He watches the muscle and bone shift under that shirt, and tells himself to calm down.

“I’ll wait here,” Steve says. “You go back, call it in.”

Bucky feels indignant anger bubble up at that.

“Fuck you, Rogers,” he spits. “You ain’t doing this without me.”

Steve gives him a long, unreadable look, then nods.

“Fine. Stay low.”

  
. . .  
  


_2011 - Bucky_   
  


“We had our suspects identified at the location, y’know?” Bucky’s gesturing with his hands, a lit cigarette smoking between his left index and middle fingers. “Might as well just leave the shit be and hand it off.”

“That’s not what happened, though,” Detective Carter says, and the way she pitches her voice tells him that it’s not a question.

“No,” Bucky closes his eyes. “No, it’s not. As soon as we started to back off, man…BLAM!” He smacks his hand flat on the table, enjoying the way both detectives jump, just a tiny bit. “Bullets cut through the air, right near Steve’s head. We dove opposite ways into the high growth, but they’d already spotted us. Blew apart this tree between us, I mean, it was on.”

.

_Steve_

“Heavy shit,” Steve shakes his head. “Ferns and whatnot, bursting all around us, bark flying off of trees. We were in a shitstorm.”

“Hmm,” is all either detective says.  
  


. . .  
  


_2004_   
  


The first man they see is Will Simpson himself, wearing just a yellowed pair of underwear and a sinister looking gas-mask as he strides around the outside of the house. He doesn’t see either of the detectives, and Steve nudges Bucky, signaling their next move.

“State Police,” he calls out, weapon drawn. “Put your hands on your head and get on your knees.”

Simpson turns around, pulling the mask up to reveal his face.

“Put your hands on your head now,” Steve says, his voice steady and sharp. “Do it now. Don’t even think about it, you sonofabitch. Put your hands on your head right now, intertwine your fingers. Back up toward me.”

Simpson does, slowly, and drops to his knees at close enough range for Bucky to slap the handcuffs on him.

“It’s time, isn’t it?” Simpson drawls lazily, tilting his head up to look at them. The odd angle of his neck makes his glassy eyes all the more unnerving. “The black stars.”

Steve kicks him in the ribs. “Shut the fuck up.”

. . .

2011  
  


“They’d spotted us before we crossed the forest,” Steve recounts, the same made-up details that they’d agreed upon, seven long years ago. “All we could do, really, was duck for cover, dig in, try getting closer.” He rubs a hand over his eyes, for effect. “It was chaos.”

. . .

_2004_   
  


The house is a wreck inside, squalid conditions not even beginning to cover it, and it reeks of chemicals and rotting food. Rotting flesh, maybe.

“State Police,” Bucky calls, following his gun around each corner.   
Rumlow makes a run for it, and he’s about to pursue, when he sees them.

A little boy and girl, tied to a bed in a room so full of shit and filth and clutter that the floor can’t be seen. They can’t be older than nine, ten at the most, and Bucky’s knees go weak under him.

He cries out in wordless, helpless rage.

Two little children, being kept here for god knows what purpose, in this hellhole. The kids are both unconscious, maybe not even alive, but Bucky’s too blinded with the need for retribution. He can barely see straight, his vision is so blurred with his own anger.

He kicks his way out the back door to where Steve’s standing with his gun pointed at Simpson.

.

“Why the antlers?” Steve can’t help asking, while Bucky goes into the house, weapon drawn.

Simpson smiles, his teeth yellow and ruined from meth.

“The black stars rise,” he singsongs. “I know what happens next. I saw you in my dream,” he tells Steve. “You’re in Carcosa now, with me. With Hydra. He sees you.”

“Bucky!” Steve shouts, hearing the sound of swearing, of yelling from in the house.

“You’ll do this again,” Simpson says, his voice making Steve’s skin crawl. “Time is a flat circle.”

Bucky comes out, gun aimed at Simpson, his face gone pale with horror. He looks sick, like he’s seen something indescribably awful.

“You motherfucker,” he whispers, fingering the trigger of the gun.

“Listen, Nietzsche,” Steve grunts, then digs the nose of his gun up under Simpson’s jaw. “Shut the fuck up. Bucky, put the gun down.”

“There you go,” Simpson says smugly. “Black star. Hail Hydra.”

“Put your hands on your head,” Steve says, but there’s no time for that.

“They got kids in there, Steve,” Bucky says, sounding pained. “Little kids. Jesus christ.”

“Cut off one head,” Simpson intones, like he's reciting a Bible verse, “And two more shall take its place.”  
  
Bucky fires his gun, four shots at close range, into Simpson’s skull. He looks like he’s going to be sick.

There’s a beat, a stillness that settles in for just a moment, then reality comes rushing back in like a cold slap.

“Fuck,” Steve spits. “Get the cuffs off him before his blood settles. We have to make this look right.”

“Goddamn,” Bucky breathes, scrambling to to just that. “What do we do, Steve?”

. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“While I was hunkered down behind this old, decrepit boat, Captain America Bucky Barnes decides he’s gonna run deep into the woods, flank around the back of the house where Simpson is firing at us, right?” Steve is getting into the story now, remembering how to embellish the pretend details just so they’re believable. “Well, he sneaks up behind Simpson, and just as Simpson turns, he popped one off in him. Clean, head shot…dropped him.”

Steve remembers Bucky’s sickly expression, his shaking hand as he stared at Simpson where he knelt. He remembers thinking that whatever Bucky must have found in that house had to have been an unspeakable evil.

“Now,” he tells the detectives conversationally, “His buddy, Rumlow, he made a run for it. His homemade, cracker-ass security system took care of the rest. Hear he gets all his meals through a straw these days.”

Brock Rumlow wasn’t killed in the explosion of the landmine, but it pretty much destroyed the majority of his whole left side. His face was severely scarred, as was the rest of his body on that side. Steve had heard through the grapevine that he’d had to have his dick and balls removed as a result of the burns.

He thinks about that, instead of thinking about that bullshit Simpson talked, about black stars and flat circles.

He thinks about anything else; he thinks about what came after.  
  


. . .  
  


_2004_

  
“Go see to the kids,” Steve nods to Bucky. “Don’t bring them out until I say so.”

Bucky goes back in the house, seemingly in a daze, on autopilot.

Steve, meanwhile, gets to work making it look like a shootout of epic proportions took place. He fires a machine gun, willy-nilly, at the surrounding area. He checks Rumlow’s body, sees that the fucker is still breathing, and calls for a bus.

Then, he goes inside, and he and Bucky come out together, each carrying one child in their arms.   
It’s what they call a hollow victory.

. . .

_2004 - Board Hearing_

“Yeah, I can say that I walked away from the experience with a greater respect for the sanctity of human life,” Steve says on the stands at the board hearing.

“Thank you, Detective,” a trustee says. “I believe I speak to the board when I commend you on the heroism displayed by you and Detective Barnes.”

Steve shakes his head.

“We were just doing our jobs, sir.” He catches Bucky’s eye from in the first row, and his shoulders relax just a little.

. . .

_2011_

  
“After we confirmed Simpson’s death, and called a bus for Rumlow, we searched the rest of the premises.” Bucky bites his lip thoughtfully. “That’s when we found the children. I mean, we got very lucky. We could just as easily have been chewed to pieces by an AK on approach.”

Detective Morales looks like he’s torn between calling bullshit, and wanting to believe the story, its heroism and danger.

“There were the twig sculptures at the scene, and the LSD on hand matched that in Lorna Dane,” Bucky continues. “Everyone was pretty satisfied that we got our man.”

“What about the kids?” Carter asks.

“The boy had been missing since January,” Bucky says, feeling tired. He remembers the little blue veins in the boy’s temple, his blonde eyelashes. “He’d been dead less than day. The girl hadn’t been reported yet. From St. Landry, catatonic when we found her.”

“Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about that day, Mr. Barnes?”

Bucky pauses, then clenches a fist tight against his leg under the table.

“Why should I live in history, huh?” He’s agitated now, uncomfortable in his skin, in his existence. “I don’t want to know anything anymore, fuck. Someone once said, ‘Time is a flat circle.’ Everything we’ve ever done, or will do, we’re gonna do over and over and over again.”

“What…” Carter starts to say, but Bucky’s not stopping. He can’t. He’s on a roll.   
  
“…And that little boy, and that little girl, they’re gonna be in that room again…and again…and again. Forever.”  
  


And he’ll be in his own head, losing Steve, again, and again, and again.

  
. . .  
  


_2004 - after the hearing_   
  


“You couldn’t manage to get shot, Rogers?”

“Maybe next time, Marko,” Steve shakes it off. Phillips is waiting for them, all smiles and handshakes. “Thank you for not doubting us, sir.”

“Never did,” Phillips says easily, shaking both their hands vigorously.

“You going out to celebrate?” Wilson asks from his desk, in the midst of filing paperwork for one of his cases.

Steve looks at Bucky for a second, then looks away.

“Nah,” he says. “Gonna go home, sleep it off.” He thinks about it, then adds, “Probably take a shower.”

“Man, I heard that,” Wilson agrees. “Case like that, leaves you feeling all kinds of grimy.”

  
. . .  
  


_2011_

“There’s plenty of news stories, if you care to find them,” Steve tells the detectives. “Bucky got promoted to Detective Sergeant, and I got a commendation for bravery—basically because he insisted. Things were…things were pretty good, then, for awhile. I guess.”

. . .

_2004 - Steve_   
  


Steve’s just gotten out of the shower, feeling at least a little cleaner than he did before. He’s debating the merits of popping a couple of pills, or just staying up and reading.

Something’s not sitting right with him, closing this case. He’s almost certain it’s just his paranoia, his fucking obsessive brain that won’t let it lie, but he has this feeling…this awful feeling in his gut that Simpson and Rumlow weren’t the only two sick fucks involved.

He tries talking himself out of going down this road, does some deep breaths and stares at the palms of his hands.

There’s a knock on the door after a few minutes, and he can’t decide whether he’s grateful or annoyed for the interruption.

When he opens it, it’s Bucky, standing there in regular clothes, looking like he doesn’t know what to say.

.

_2004 - Bucky_   
  


He stands on the front steps of Steve’s apartment, feeling like an idiot, second-guessing himself.

When Steve answers the door, though, all thoughts empty out of his noisy brain—all but one.

“Bucky,” Steve says, and he looks—he looks surprised, caught off-guard. Underneath that, though, riding close to the surface, he looks hungry.

“This is me,” Bucky tells him, “I’m letting you know. You wanted me to…”

Steve yanks him inside by the front of his t-shirt, shutting the door and bolting it behind them. It’s not two seconds later that lucky finds himself being pressed up against the bare wall, his mouth being coaxed open by Steve’s tongue.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he groans, arching into his partner, lifting his chin to expose more of his neck as Steve’s mouth moves lower. The stubble burns, and there’s a white-hot flash of teeth against Bucky’s jugular.

Steve is a different man right now, wild and scrambling to get his hands on every inch of Bucky that he can, tugging the hem of his shirt upwards.

“Off,” he growls, mouthing at the corner of Bucky’s jaw. “Take this fuckin’ thing _off_.”

Bucky does, hastily and without grace, and watches as Steve does the same with his threadbare singlet.

“You…” he looks down at Bucky’s exposed chest, and the expression on his face makes Bucky feel hot and flushed, being the focus of that kind of heavy-hitting lust. “Fuck, _fuck_.”

They kiss against the wall for a little while longer, messy and desperate, chests pressed together and dicks hard in their pants. Then, belts get unbuckled, and they stumble over to the bed in the far corner. Bucky’s whole body feels like it’s on fire from the inside.

“You really want this,” he can’t help saying, awe coloring his breathless tone. Steve’s blown pupils, his red lips, they’re making him dizzy. He still can’t quite believe this is happening.

Steve glares up at him, defiant as ever. “Of course I do,” he says. His eyes say, _‘and fuck you for making me say so.’_

Bucky can’t believe how much of Steve there is now, when there had used to be so little. He wants to touch all of it, to get his mouth on every bit of skin. They both kick their jeans to the corner and grind their hips, craving friction.

“Need you,” Steve pants into his ear. “ _Fuck_ , I—Bucky, I need you in me.”

And that’s like adrenaline straight to Bucky’s blood, mixed up with dope and serotonin and all the good shit that the human body can produce. He kisses Steve again, sloppy and with maybe too much teeth.

“God _damn_ ,” he rasps, helplessly thrusting up against Steve’s leg. “Gonna kill me, Stevie.”

“I definitely am if you don’t start fucking me in the next five seconds,” Steve complains, and Bucky can’t help the pained sound he makes in response.

Dirty words never sounded so good as they do coming from these lips, in this moment.

Steve’s got his lips parted, and this little line between his eyebrows, like he’s concentrating on not losing himself too soon. His face is flushed, he’s flushed all the way down to his chest, and it’s driving Bucky crazy.

There’s very little preamble, but neither one of them cares much, neither one of them wants to wait. Bucky scrambles for the little bottle of lube Steve hands him from somewhere on the floor, and coats his fingers quickly. He eventually has three inside Steve, up to the knuckle and pumping in and out, until Steve’s writhing and swearing and begging on the cheap sheets.

He never knew he wanted to hear Steve beg until now. File that away for later analysis, or maybe just file it in the spank-bank.

Hastily, he tears open a condom and rolls it onto himself, squeezing more lube into his hand and wrapping it around his dick.

“Fucking _do_ it, Barnes,” Steve hisses, and Bucky lines his cock up at Steve’s hole, the blunt head nudging at the little ring of muscle.

“I don’t wanna hurt you, Steve,” Bucky grunts, though he’s dying to get inside him.

“You won’t,” Steve growls in reply, then half-whines, “I won’t break. Fuck, just—I _need_ ”—

—When Bucky pushes in, his body goes fire-hot. Steve is tight, crushingly tight, and it’s too good. It feels like—it feels like Bucky’s whole brain is shut down, now, like he’s just his body. He’s just his dick where it’s inside of Steve.

After a few minutes of adjustment, he starts to move, slowly at first, but picking up the pace at Steve’s urging. Steve’s fingers are digging into his biceps painfully, but Bucky wants it. He wants his skin under Steve’s nails, a memento of sorts for when this is over. He slams into Steve, the sounds their bodies make are sticky and obscene, slapping skin against sweaty skin.

“Steve,” Bucky hears himself, voice falling somewhere between a gasp and a grunt. “ _Steve._ ”

Steve’s dick is rock-hard and flushed red between them, the sticky pearl of pre-come at the tip smearing across Bucky’s abdomen. When he brings a hand down to jerk Steve off, he gets shooed away.

“M’gonna come on just your cock,” Steve pants, and all Bucky can think is _goddamn_.

The mattress groans under their combined weight, and Bucky braces himself on one forearm so he can drive in deep, pulling Steve’s legs up higher for a better angle.

It doesn’t take long before he’s hitting that spot inside Steve, making him cry out, bitten-off and ragged, making him say Bucky’s name. It doesn’t take long before Steve’s dick goes off like a shot, slicking both their stomachs with thick, white stripes of come. Bucky doesn’t last more than a minute after that, burying himself deep and wishing he could fill Steve up with his orgasm, wishing that the condom wasn’t in the way. He wants to watch it drip out of Steve’s hole, shiny white against the angry pink.

He collapses on top of Steve for a few minutes, just breathing and listening to him breathe, then slowly, wincing, he pulls out and removes the condom.

“Trashcan’s in the kitchen,” Steve mumbles, sounding ten different kinds of strung out.

Bucky staggers across the floor, narrowly avoiding a nasty trip over a pile of books left haphazardly in the middle of the room, and into the kitchenette to dispose of the tied-off rubber. He feels, deep down, more than a little bit proud that he could make Steve sound like that.

When he returns to the mattress—it’s really not worthy of being called a bed—Steve’s lying on his back in the space nearest to the wall, having cleaned himself up and made enough room for Bucky to lie down next to him.

“Hey,” he says, sounding drowsy and happy. “C’mere.” He makes grabby hands, and Bucky’s dumbstruck by how different this Steve is from the one he’s worked with nearly everyday for a year and some months.

Bucky climbs back onto the mattress and gets under the thin covers, still feeling like the whole thing is some surreal dream, as Steve curls into him.

“Am I allowed some sweet-talk?” Bucky hears himself saying, in a voice that sounds way too content to be his own. “Or is the afterglow limited to nonverbal affection only?”

He hasn’t talked like this to anyone in—well, in a long time. He used to be a terrible flirt, charming as hell and well aware of it. Now, he's become just…not.

It feels less weird than it should, he thinks, lying here with Steve Rogers in his arms.

“You wanna sweet-talk me, Barnes?” Bucky doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that Steve’s got a dumb grin on his face.

“Not anymore,” Bucky grumbles, but he wraps his arm around Steve’s broad back a little tighter. “I just remembered what a little shit you are. Never mind.”

Steve comes up on his elbows, struggling a little in the haze of post-sex sleepiness, and leans down to press his lips against Bucky’s. It’s a gentle kiss, totally opposite from the ones that led them into bed, though it’s just as world-shifting as those kisses. Just in a different way.

Bucky’s not sure if he’s ever been kissed like this, but he already knows he’s in trouble; he didn’t think this through, not in the ways he ought to have. They’re partners, with a difficult, shared personal history, and now…this.

But he doesn’t want to think about that, and he’s fairly certain neither does Steve, so Bucky reaches up to cup Steve’s stubbled jaw as he returns the kiss. He feels Steve’s long eyelashes against his cheek, feels that sweet curve of tiny smile on Steve’s mouth as he kisses.

When they part, Steve lays back down on Bucky’s left, pillowing his head on Bucky’s bare chest.  
  


Just as he’s starting to drift off, Bucky realizes, half-coherent, that this is how Steve used to sleep on him when they were young.  
  


That shouldn’t matter, but it does.  
  


. . .

 __  
2011  
  


“Look, you know about Steve,” Bucky says tiredly. “During those couple of years we were partnered, he probably pulled more assists than any other detective in the state. Word got around quick.”

Carter raises an eyebrow as if to say, go on. Bucky takes a breath.

“You want a confession, you see if State Detective Rogers is available.”

. 

_2011 - Steve  
_

“Your interview technique,” Morales says. “Sure there’s not some secret you can pass on?”

Steve’s fingers itch to wrap around a pencil, or curl into a fist. Instead, he reaches for the mug with his tonic water.

“Look,” he says after a long swallow, “Everybody knows there’s something wrong with them. They just don’t know what it is. Everybody wants confession.” He thinks about himself, about Bucky. “Everybody wants some cathartic narrative for it—the guilty, especially. Oh, but everybody’s guilty of something.”

Carter seems to mull this over, then changes her line of inquiry.

“Tell us what you know about Barnes’ ex-wife, Natasha.”

Steve laughs despite himself.

“She became the District Attorney,” Steve says. “No surprise there.”

Morales purses his lips.

“You know what happened there between them?”

The question rankles Steve; why should he be hashing out the sordid details of someone else’s long-ago divorce? What bearing could it possibly have on the case files these two are supposedly trying to reconstruct?

“Maybe you oughtta ask him that,” Steve suggests. “Way I understood it, they just realized being married to each other—being married in general—wasn’t what they wanted after all. Amiable split, they lived together for some years afterwards. Very close friends.”  
  


. . .  
  


_2004_   
  


“Guy Leonard Francis,” Steve reads off of the booking record. “They say you killed two people in Livingston, they’re saying you’re a drugstore robber.”  
The man in the chair, cuffed and bruised, says nothing.

“You know they already got a nickname for you?” Steve doesn’t change his tone or expression. “Yep, 'Southern Fried Pharmacy Firearm Thief.' You like that?” He sits down across from the man, rests his elbows on the table. “Got a nice ring to it. Bit of a mouthful, though.”

Francis says exactly nil. Steve knows that Bucky’s watching from behind the two-way mirror. Steve exhales, throws the file down on the tabletop.

“Fuck, I’m telling you man, the shit they got these days…technology, fingerprints, DNA…you’d have to be a fucking genius to get past that shit.” Steve looks Francis dead in the eyes, then says, “Let’s face it, Francis. You ain’t no fuckin’ genius, are you?”

“First, you come in and say, ‘I got the drugs from somewhere else.’ Then, you say, ‘No. I don’t remember. I don’t remember where I got the drugs.’” Steve shakes his head in practiced sympathy. “You’re making it too complicated, Francis. You’re creating a maze for yourself that you’re never gonna get out of. They’ve got you.”

It’s in the guy’s eyes now, the sad, sorry sonofafuck that he is; he’s starting to tremble just a little. His eyes have that glossy sheen of fear. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. Steve wills his lip not to curl at the man’s greasy hair, his dirty, pockmarked skin.

“You gotta change your play,” he tells Francis. “That’s what you’ve gotta do. Plead impairment. You know what that means?” Francis, predictably, shakes his head no. “Ok, that’s when you can’t be held accountable for your actions.”

A light comes on in Francis’s eyes, now, like a single candle being lit inside a cobwebby attic.

“Well…” he says slowly, his drawl thick and hard to understand. “I don’t think I ought to be blame…well, entirely blamed…for them things I did when I was under the influence of anything.”

Steve nearly slaps the table in victory. He settles for imagining doing it.

“Yes,” he agrees with enthusiasm. “That is exactly what I’m saying, pal. PCP makes a man crazy. One time, famous case, a guy cut his own face off on that shit.”

Francis looks on with awed disgust. “For real?”

“Hell yeah,” Steve nods. “You mix that with meth, that’s an insanity defense if ever I heard one. How’re they gonna say a man who’s not on anything is insane because he did something crazy, but that a man who’s on something that made him crazy is sane, know what I mean?”

Francis nods, eagerness showing through on his ruined face.

“Works both ways, like?”   
  
“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, just like that.”

“I mean,” Francis sits up in his chair a little straighter, clearly relieved and giddy at the thought that he might stand a chance in court, “I’m not even saying I remember anything. I was shit-hammered.”

“There we go,” Steve encourages him, all the while thinking, fucking got you, you prick. “That’s your play right there, fuck this amnesia story. That dirt doesn’t stick, but an insanity defense, that’s your ticket. It’s your way out, because you’ve sobered up now. Got your mind right.”

Francis is nodding away, like a fucking dashboard bobblehead, just eating it up with a goddamn spoon.

“You gotta show them the difference between that madman in that pharmacy who blew those two people away, and the man who’s sitting here right now.” Steve gestures, making a gun out of his fingers. “You have to show shock, terror, and re-fucking-morse.”

Francis nods some more. “I am. I do. I’m…I’m scared, sir.”

“You should be, right?” Steve says, looking up from the file he was pretending to skim. “What’d you say to the pharmacist?”

Francis thinks about it, confused. He looks like a stupid child in the body of a 30-year old meth-head. “I said, ‘Gimme everything.’”

Steve rests his chin on his hands. “And then what?” He lets the silence hang for a moment, lets it stretch out good and long, then, “Bam. Bam. Blew that fucker away, didn’t you? You want forgiveness for that?”

He doesn’t blink, just stares into Francis’s glassy, yellowed eyes.

“Yeah,” Francis stammers softly.

“Say it,” Steve urges gently.

“I want it,” Francis half-whimpers.

“You want what?” Steve leans in, still using his nice voice.

“F-forgiveness,” Francis scrunches his eyes shut.

Steve snorts. “You see what you just did? You just copped to a double murder, Francis. They got you now.” He stands up, makes to leave.

“But…” Francis is clearly so steamrolled by what just happened, it shows on his simple, ugly face. “I wanna make a deal.”  
  
One hand on the doorknob, Steve turns to look over his shoulder.

“A deal about what?”

“I know things,” Francis insists, though the way his shoulders shake belies this false confidence.

“Oh, here we go,” Steve rolls his eyes. “What do you know now, all of a sudden?”

Seeing that he’s got Steve’s attention, Francis leans back in his chair.

“I know who you are, and I know about that woman y’all found out in the woods last year, the antlers.”

It jars him, but just for a second. Everyone in the state of Louisiana knew about the Lorna Dane case, it was never a big secret. “That doesn’t mean shit, my friend,” he says. “That was in the newspapers. You don’t know shit, do you?”

Francis sticks his jaw out a little, posturing.

“No, that ain’t true. I know that y’all never caught the man that did that.” His voice isn't shaking now, and he’s looking the tiniest bit smug. “He’s been out there killing.”

Steve feels irritation and anger flare up inside him, his fists balling up at his sides.

“You’re talking out your ass, pal,” he says sternly. “You don’t know a fuckin’ thing. Just trying to buy yourself some time, aren’t you?”

Francis shakes his head, and a nasty smile comes across his face. His teeth are about as pleasant as the rest of him—which is to say, not at all.

“I met him once,” he tells Steve, with all the authority of a liar. “There’s big people who know about him, big people. Rich men.”

He should walk away. He got the confession, and it’s time for Steve to just walk out of this room, to leave Francis to pick at his sores and think about what prison will be like. But he doesn’t. He stands where he is.

“There ain’t no deal,” he points one finger, “Because there ain’t no people.” It’s always in these moments of frustrated fury that Steve’s voice takes on that clipped, flat speech from Brooklyn. It’s the kind of accent that people like to try and mimic, but they never get it right.

“You make me a deal,” Francis lays his hands on the table, looks up at Steve, trying to seem tough. “Make me a deal with these murders.”

Steve shakes his head. “Not gonna make you a deal, Francis. You don’t have anything because you’re full of shit, and there’s nobody alive that did that killing. He’s dead, pal.”  
Francis’s eyes look strangely alert, now, not as glassy and glazed as they had throughout the interview.

“I’ll tell you about the Yellow King. ‘Bout Hydra.”

Steve freezes, turns back around.

“What the fuck did you just say to me, asshole?”

Francis just smiles. It makes Steve’s whole body light up with rage, and he crosses the room to shake the other man violently by the shoulders.

“Give me a name.” He shakes him again, knocks his teeth around in his drugged-up head. “Give me a fuckin’ name. You wanna fuckin’ play, kid? I promise, you won’t like the way I play.”

He rolls up his sleeves, draws his fist back.

“The Yellow King!” Francis shouts, skin stretching tight across his bones as he grins hideously.

Steve doesn’t hesitate, he lays into the creep with his fists. It feels good in the moment, the way it feels good sometimes to make people hurt.

“Get offa me!” Francis yelps, trying in vain to shield himself from the onslaught of blows. “Get off me, man! Deal with me, you son of a bitch!”

Steve says nothing, just hits him again. There’s a trickle of blood running out of Francis’s left nostril, but he won’t back down.

“I want a deal!” He crows.  
  


Steve’s about to knock him out cold, when Bucky and Detective Wilson come in to pull Steve off of Francis.

“Calm down, dude,” Sam’s saying.

“Easy, Steve. Come on, come on,” Bucky tells him, getting him out into the hall. “Now take a deep breath, alright?”

Steve does as he’s told, breathing deeply so his lungs hurt.

“You got the confession, but you made it inadmissible,” Sam says with a wince, like he didn’t want to be the one to point it out.

“What the fuck do you mean?” Steve’s temper flares once, but Bucky’s hand on his shoulder helps to bring him back down.

“He’s still talking in there, jiving all crazy,” Sam says. “He knows exactly who you are.”

Steve frowns.

“Who called me in here?” He can’t remember who asked for the assist, just that it was something to do, and he felt like doing it.

“Marko,” Sam says darkly. Nobody likes Cain Marko, but for some reason, he’s still around. “He heard you were the man for the quick confessions.”

“Shit,” Steve wipes his face on his sleeve. He’s sweaty, from getting all worked up in the interview room.

“I’m sorry, man,” Sam is shaking his head, and he seems sincere. “I wish I could pass on Marko’s appreciation for the assist, but…”

“…Yeah, we all know appreciation ain’t exactly in Marko’s vocabulary,” Bucky mutters darkly.

“Exactly,” agrees Sam. “He’s gonna have a hell of a time trying to salvage that double murder confession, though. There’s that.”

Steve sighs, then nods. He opens his mouth to ask, but Sam reads his mind.

“If he wasn’t just running you in there,” he says seriously, “You’ll get anything we get. You have my word.”

“Fine,” Steve closes his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, Wilson.”

“No prob, Rogers,” Sam pats him on the shoulder, then walks down the hall in the opposite direction.  
  


.  
  


Bucky goes home with Steve after they clock out, and they fuck fast and dirty. They shower together in Steve’s cramped apartment bathroom, and eat leftover takeout from two nights ago that’s in the fridge.

  
Later, when they both get hard again, Bucky whispers into Steve’s ear, his lips soft and breath hot against the tender cartilage.

“Come on, Stevie,” he croons, moving his hips in a slow, steady rhythm. “Ease up, baby. C’mon.”

Steve chokes out words he’s not sure are words, and he lets Bucky fuck him, slow and languid, until he’s begging and clawing at the cheap sheets. He wants it hard again, wants to feel that punishing slap and bruising pace, but Bucky won’t give it to him. He just keeps talking to him all soft and low, telling him all kinds of things that he can’t ever admit he wants to hear. He doesn’t know how to be treated like this, it’s been so long.

When Bucky finally reaches down with one hand, tugging loosely at Steve’s aching cock, it’s almost too much.

He leans down and brushes his lips over Steve’s, the faintest ghost of a kiss, and he whispers, “You’re so good for me, Stevie. You can come for me, babydoll, c’mon, lemme see you come.”

And that’s all it takes to make Steve’s body feel like it’s about to float off into some other dimension. His orgasm shakes him, makes him cry out. His fingers dig into the bare, damp skin of Bucky’s back. It feels like his brain just reset.

Bucky comes soon after, lips grazing Steve’s ear, and they lie there for a long time before cleaning up. Just stroking each other’s skin, looking through the rosy lenses of post-orgasmic haze.

  
They fall asleep together, and Steve doesn’t wake up until 5am.  
  


It’s the longest he’s slept in one night without drugs, since Peggy died.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“In eternity, where there is no time, nothing can grow.” Bucky’s gone deep into his strange collection of thoughts, now. “Nothing can…become. Nothing changes. So, death created time to grow the things that it would kill…and you are reborn, but into the same life you’ve always been born into.”

Morales and Carter are looking at him with a mixture of pity, horror, and curious interest.

“I mean,” he continues, undeterred, “How many times have we had this conversation, detectives?”

“Seems like it’s going on forever this time around,” Morales mutters, and Carter must step on his foot under the table, because he makes a small squeak.

“When you can’t remember your lives, you can’t change your lives, and that is the terrible secret of the fate of all life.” Bucky nods sagely, thoughts swimming through the sea of booze in his bloodstream. “You’re trapped…by that nightmare you keep waking up into.”

“Lovely,” Carter says tartly.  
  


. . .  
  
 _2004_  
  


“You okay, pal?” Bucky glances at Steve from over the newspaper he’s skimming while they wait for their breakfast orders.

“We gotta go to Abbeville,” Steve replies, jiggling his leg under the booth. It’s an anxious tic of his.

“I got a deposition this afternoon,” Bucky points out, to which Steve’s response is a groan.

“Aw, can’t you just push it? I got someone we need to talk to.”

Bucky has the overwhelming sense of pre-dread, that little twinge of foreboding that comes just before the before-part of something bad.

“You really think he’s serious about having something,” Bucky stares at him flatly. “If he is, then what?”

“Will Simpson deserved to die, Bucky,” Steve says matter-of-factly. “That was justice. Anyhow, I’m just not ruling out other agencies.”

Bucky sniffs his black coffee, making a face. He takes a sip anyway, making another face after he swallows.

“What does that mean, though?” He eyes Steve warily.

Steve leans forward a little, vibrating out of his skin to share whatever it is he’s connected in his head full of dots.

“Guy Francis and Alex Summers both say the Yellow King,” he says in a low voice.  Lorna Dane said the Yellow King.

“Okay,” Bucky sighs. “Look, Steve. If the killer is still out there, why haven’t there been more killings?”

The look Steve shoots him is wholly unimpressed.

“Well, maybe there have been, Buck. Maybe we just don’t know about ‘em, hadn’t put ‘em together.” Steve’s coffee sits untouched, but he’s twiddling a packet of sugar in his left hand. “Ever wonder why that task force was so hot to take the case back in ’03?”

Bucky can’t help the laugh that escapes him.

“Are you trying to tell me you think the task force was in on it?” He tries to be serious, but he starts snorting with laughter again.

.

“Fuck,” Steve spits. “How the fuck did this happen?”

The guard at the lockup shrugs. “He knew what he was looking at, what with the double murders and all. Guess he thought about it and made a choice.”

They’ve been called in because Guy Francis killed himself. Of course he fucking did.

“You got a camera feed?” Steve asks, and when the guard says yes, he requests that it be rewound. “Go back further,” he directs. “Okay, stop, _stop!_ Now play this back.”

There’s no audio on it, just video, and it’s apparently three hours of nothing until the blood can be seen seeping out from under the cell door.

“He took a phone call at 7:15, his lawyer,” the guard offers.

“We don’t know what somebody might have told him on that phone call,” Steve says darkly. “I want to see your incoming call logs. Now.”

The guard complies, handing the records to Steve.

“And what are the officers names? Marko and his partner, Osbourne, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the guard nods.

“I’ll need their files, please,” Steve says.

“Of course, sir.”

. .

“Why do you want prints off this, again?” Crime scene tech is a mouthy little thing named Kate, but she goes by her last name, Bishop.

Bucky nudges Steve, who’s been looking around the area the payphone is located, frowning at everything. When he can’t be bothered, Bucky answers for him.

“That’s a public phone,” he tells Bishop. “No kind of lawyer makes phone calls from here.”

“Francis have relatives?” Steve asks, thumbing through Marko’s file.

“Yeah,” Bucky remembers reading, “Sisters, a few nieces, nephews. How’s that connect to the suicide?”

“Somebody might have told him something,” Bishop chimes in. “Gave him no choice.”   
Steve looks subtly impressed, and Bucky just feels tired.

“Well, great,” he says dryly.  
  


. . .  
  


_2011 - Steve_   
  


“Okay, so when he got going on this thing again, did he mention Billy Lee Stryker?” Morales asks, smoothing his tie.

“You know that he did,” Steve says tiredly.

“Stryker died a couple years back, in 2008,” Carter tells him.

“Yeah,” Steve nods. “Yep, what was that, mixed medications? So what?”

Carter and Morales share a look.

“Right after Barnes showed back up in the state,” Carter says.

“Fuck this,” Steve shakes his head. “Fuck this bullshit. You tell me right now why you’re all over Barnes, or I’ll walk.”

Thunder rumbles outside, signaling a summer storm just beginning.

“His record, his reports, his stories,” Morales looks pained. “They don’t add up.”

Steve glares. “So talk to him about it, then. Stop pissing in my ear.”

“We did,” Carter replies crisply.

.

_2011 - Bucky_   
  


“His records, his reports, his stories,” Carter says slowly, “They don’t add up, unfortunately.”

“Didn’t I already say fuck you?” Bucky spits. “Talk to him about it. I don’t need this bullshit.”

“We did,” Morales replies, then seeing Bucky’s expression, asks, “What?”

Bucky snorts.

“Well, if you two talked to Rogers, you weren’t getting a read on him.” His lips quirk up into a slight smile. “He was getting a read on you.”   
  
“Maybe it’s time for you to stop dancing with us,” Carter says suddenly, tone sharp and eyes sharper. “Tell us what you’ve really been up to, how you spend your time.”

Bucky glares.

“I already told you what I do with my time,” he sneers.

“Except that you’ve been bullshitting us all afternoon,” Carter points out. “Excuse us for one minute, please.”

She and Morales leave the room.

.

_Steve_   
  


“These are from the crime scene in Lake Charles once folks got word,” Morales hands the file to Steve. “Recognize anybody in there?”

Steve doesn’t need to look; he knows what he’s going to see.

“Lake Charles is a little bit of a haul for you, isn’t it?” Carter quirks one pretty eyebrow. “How did you keep her out of the papers? Maybe you’ve got friends in high places?”

Steve wants to laugh, but he just stares at them.

“Your truck and a man fitting your description was spotted in the vicinity of our crime scene five times by five different people over the last month,” Morales says, like he’s reciting facts from a children’s book. “And you know something funny? Your boy Barnes did the same thing. You guys got something going again? Hm?”

Steve slumps back in his seat, rolling his eyes.

“Now, besides people seeing him and his car, and you and your truck around the location for weeks, we know that you went off the grid after you left. Matter of fact, so did Barnes. Didn’t show up anywhere ’til last year in Louisiana.” Carter looks like she’s been waiting for this all afternoon. Quite possibly, she has. “Got his license renewed. So did you. Nobody knows what either of you have been doing in the meantime.”

“Barnes has a storage shed near Church Point,” Morales tells him. “He won’t let us see what’s inside. Told us to get a warrant or fuck off.”

Steve feels helpless, unsure whether the detectives want him to incriminate himself, or Bucky, or both.

“ _Christ,_ ” he laughs. “Try working a case.”   
  
“We are working it,” Carter smirks. “See, how we work it is, we think way back, you put the case on Trish Walker. Put it on her old boyfriend.”

“What,” Steve says flatly.

“Maybe Simpson and Rumlow knew you,” Morales picks up the ball rolling from his partner. “Maybe you traveled in the same circles, got the same hobbies. Maybe they had something on you. Maybe they had something on Barnes.”

“You people have some nerve,” Steve shakes his head.

“You just kept pulling the right old murders, huh? Take the case wherever you wanted it to go, and Barnes, he just let you.” Carter has a steely kind of fire in her dark eyes, and Steve knows that she’s the one who gets the confessions. “You’re a juicer,” she adds. “You ever black out? Ever wake up not knowing what happened?”

“Look,” Steve closes his eyes. “You wanna arrest me, go ahead.” He holds his hands out, palms up. “If you want to follow me, come on.” He gets up, patting his pockets down for his phone and then stepping towards the door. “You want to see something, get a warrant.”

.

_Bucky_   
  


“You want to see something, get a fucking warrant,” Bucky says, a nearly perfect echo of his ex-partner’s words. “Thanks for the beer, detectives,” he says, standing and swaying on his feet a little. “Other than that, you wasted my fucking day, company man.”

He’s halfway through the door, but he thinks of something. Something he has to say, before he walks out of here.

“You’re wrong,” he says. “About me, about Steve. Especially about Steve.” He makes sure he looks both detectives in the eyes individually; first one, then the other. “Nobody could change that much. You’re dead wrong.”

“Hey, you’ve been telling us all day about the kind of shit he’d think up, the way he’d talk,” shrugs Carter. “And it looks like, sounds like, it rubbed off on you a hell of a lot. We got a good earful of that from both of y’all.”

“You gonna tell us that’s a stable individual?” Morales asks. “He was a junkie, way I heard it. Do you really think he’s sober? You sure as hell aren’t. He’d been down there three months, and you two caught a heater like you’ve never had before or since—the one he shines on.”

Bucky feels his face twisting up in disbelief, in anger.

“You’re saying he did such a great job, because he’s the one who did it in the first place?” He’s incredulous. This whole thing is so fucking warped.

“Didn’t he get you every bit of evidence?” Carter asks, going in for the kill. “Didn’t he push you where he wanted it to go?”

“And didn’t you follow? Didn’t you follow him into all kinds of shit, and into his bed?” Morales isn’t as innocent and young as he looks, apparently. He’s clearly learned a lot, being partnered with a shark like Carter.

“I’m out of here,” Bucky mutters. “Fuck you people.”

  
He feels for his keys in his pocket, and walks at a fast clip out of the station and into the parking lot.

It’s so much—too much to absorb. He doesn’t know if they think he’s the killer, if they think Steve’s the killer, or if they’re both in on it, a team. It’s so fucked up.

He pulls out of the lot and onto the road, headlights pointed in the direction of the bar he works at.

He needs a fucking drink.   
  


. 

  
_2011 - Natasha Romanoff interview #2_   
  


“You can’t be serious,” she laughs, but then looks at the faces of the two detectives. “You’re actually serious? You think that Barnes and Rogers killed Trish Walker, and Lorna Dane, and pinned it on Simpson and Rumlow? Do they just give detective’s badges to any asshole these days?”

Carter smiles politely and folds her hands.

“Look, Ms. Romanoff, we understand that this might be difficult to process in the moment, but if you could just think about what you know of them, maybe…”

“…Maybe I’ll just suddenly recall that my closest friend at the time and his parter were actually evil murderers?” Natasha shoots Carter a withering look. “Huh, yeah, no. Would you believe that's just not really working for me?”

“You know that they were both spotted around the Lake Charles crime scene?” Morales asks.

“Maybe they just like Lake Charles,” Natasha replies acerbically. She’s flustered, and being flustered makes her venomous. She knows that James wouldn’t do that, that Steve wouldn’t do that. “I can’t believe you called me in here to waste my time with this outlandish bullshit.”

“I think if you looked at the facts, ma’am, you would see that it’s not actually that far a reach to make,” Morales urges her, nudging the files closer to her side of the table.

Natasha looks at the files, then looks at the detectives as though they’re something nasty stuck to the bottom of her expensive, sensible shoe.

“I think we’re done here,” she says sharply, standing up and slinging her purse over her shoulder. “Thank you for this spectacular waste of time, detectives.”

“Just think about it,” Carter calls after her. “Is it really that farfetched?”  
  


Natasha’s heels click angrily on the linoleum as she stomps out of the building. She knows what James looks like now, dirty and haggard though he’s still in his thirties. She knows that Steve got help for his drinking, his drugging, looks clean-cut in a way he never used to. She knows that they’re both broken men, because of what happened to them, and then what happened between them.

But being a broken person doesn’t mean that you’ll go out looking to break others. Being broken, Natasha knows, is not the same thing as being twisted, as being warped.  
  


She pulls up the contact in her phone for Steve, and thumbs the ‘call’ button while putting her car in gear. He answers after the second ring.

_“Hello?”_   
  


“Rogers,” Natasha says, sliding her sunglasses on and checking her rearview, “We have to talk.”

 

 

 

Next up: Episode 6: Haunted Houses....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't actually believe that I'm past the halfway point on this fic! I seriously am having a blast writing it, figuring out how to change the show's plot to suit my fic, and editing and adding dialogue. 
> 
> I hope y'all enjoyed the smutty bits ;D it's not really my forte, but I tried my best. 
> 
> <3 Let me know what you think, and keep your eyes peeled for episode 6, coming later this week!


	6. Haunted Houses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2005 - Bucky and Steve have their bad day
> 
> 2011 - Carter and Morales hit a wall; Steve and Bucky reunite.

_2004_  
  
“I didn’t mean no disrespect,” the teen says, shaking his head to sweep the shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “Honest, sir.”

Bucky is boiling with anger. He has been since he got the heads-up from a friend in booking; he’d asked her to look out for a young prost named Wanda, to let him know if she ever got pulled in.

Turns out, she was raped by two boys, left to stagger into an alley where she wasn’t found until the next morning. “You didn’t mean any disrespect? Well, what am I supposed to think, when you tell me that ‘fucking whore got what she deserved’?”

“I—we didn’t— _please_ ,” the other boy is starting to cry, but they’re crocodile tears, in Bucky’s eyes.

“Wanda is sixteen, we got you on statutory alone,” Bucky says lowly, rolling up his shirtsleeves. “You know what happens to pretty boys like you who go up to the farm for rape?”

He glances towards the office, where his buddy has agreed to unlock the door to the boys’ cell.

“Look at that,” he remarks drolly, “Door came open all by itself. You boys wanna step out for a minute? Get some air?”

The boys shake their heads. “No, sir.”

Pieces of shit. Little pieces of shit, walking around all entitled, thinking they can take whatever they want. It makes Bucky sick, that society allows this, encourages this. That women and girls have to bear the brunt of this.

“I think that you’re a little angry right now,” the one kid says, holding up his hands.

“You telling me how I feel?” Bucky steps into the cell. “That’s patronizing. Way I see it, you have two choices. We do this here, and I’ll put in a word with the people who’re gonna take your case, tell ‘em to go light on your sentences. Probation, maybe. And you stay the _fuck_ away from Wanda, and you stay the _fuck_ away from any girl in my parish.” He flexes his fingers, cracks his knuckles. “Or, I let ‘em file those charges. Got a lot of pals in Angola who’d love to owe me a favor.”

The boys’ breathing begins to tremble, and neither one of them moves.

“Now, come on out here,” Bucky says amiably. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”

The boys come out, heads hung low, looking at the floor. One of them has started to cry.

Bucky swings, lands one solid blow in the first boy’s stomach. He grunts, gasps in pain. He falls to his knees. Bucky catches the other one in the solar plexus, and he crumples, too.

“Please,” the one says, coughing. Bucky kicks him between the ribs. The boy whimpers.

“You remember what I told you,” Bucky grits through his teeth, kicking the other boy. “You remember this moment, remember my face. I sure as hell will remember yours.”  
  


He leaves them, bleeding and groaning, on the cell floor. He gets in his car, and drives home.

  
. . .

  
_2011_   
  


“Disciplinary reports say he was acting unstable, even before,” Carter says. For some reason, Steve came back to the station, at Natasha’s urging.

“What happened, you and him?” Morales looks like he wants to smirk. “Lover’s quarrel?”

“Fuck you,” Steve laughs.

“Your major back then, Phillips, he wrote ‘manic state’ right here,” Carter points at a form in her file, filled out in Phillips’s blocky printing.

“And you,” she says to Steve, “Were no better. You were pulling all these old cases, going to talk to people you had no business talking to.”

Steve looks at her, bemused. “Sort of like you two are doing now?”  
  


. . .  
  


_2004_   
  


“I’m with the State Police Department,” Steve says, flashing his badge. “If you’re Terry McCoy, I’d like to talk to you about your son.”

The grizzled man at the door squints up at him, suspicious. “Sheriff call for a search party? They had a marine unit out there, spotlight, everything…” he looks down. “Nothing. Four weeks later, wildlife fisheries find his pirogue, all broke up. Said it coulda been a gator.”

Steve ignores this, irritated and impatient. He knows he’s close to making some kind of connection, but he can’t sniff out the lead.

“Where’d Hank go to school?” He asks.

“Queen of Angels,” McCoy replies. “One of them Stryker schools.”

There’s a pause, and then the man starts to tremble.

“We didn’t sleep those first four weeks Hank was missing,” he tells Steve. “Drove his mama crazy. She…she thought she heard him under the water.” He lowers his voice to a whisper. “Calling for her, she said.” He wipes at his eyes, then looks back at Steve. “Hey, man, just get out of here. Get out of here.”

Steve goes, and his mind is running circles.

. .

_2004 - Bucky_

“You look happy,” Natasha says over dinner one night, her eyes twinkling knowingly. “I knew he’d be good for you.”

Bucky’d told her—of course he had—after that first time with Steve. He’d been half-certain it was all something he dreamed up, coming down from the adrenaline of the shootout. Telling her made it real, made it more solid in his mind.

“Don’t be so smug,” Bucky tells her, taking a sip of his wine. “It’s not a good look on you.”

“Liar,” Natasha flashes him a grin. “Everything’s a good look on me.”  
  
Bucky says nothing, just smiles down at his plate. He is happy. It's strange. 

. . .  
  


_2005 - Roadhouse_   
  


“You always hit the bottle this early in the day, Reverend?” Bucky slides into the stool next to the washed-out looking man at the bar.

“Who are you?” Scott Summers asks, bleary-eyed and clearly drunk.

“You don’t remember me?” Bucky asks. “I came to see you at your revival tent, back in ’03. Looks like you gave that up.”

Summers, with great effort, sits up a little straighter.

“What you want, man?” he slurs.

“Mid-nineties,” Bucky replies. “You were still with the Stryker ministry then. What can you tell me about a Stryker organization that was set up to finance rural schools?”

The former reverend sighs, long and loud. He blinks tiredly up at Bucky.

“It was called Wellspring,” he says. “It was an Evangelical initiative to provide religious education as an alternative to public school in the rural communities.”

His voice grows bitterer on this last part, like he knows exactly what Bucky’s thinking about it.

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees. “Only, there were so many dropouts in the state, a lot of kids had to bus an hour or more. Parents didn’t like that.” He thinks about ordering a drink, then decides against it. “You know about that school on Pelican Island?”

“I don’t know it specific,” Summers says. “But there was one, in 1998…accusations of children being…interfered with.” He puts his head in his hands.

Bucky’s whole body tenses. “I never found anything on that.”

Summers shakes his head.

“It was…it was kept internal, I think,” he says. “Maybe it was nothing, maybe people was paid.” He looks Bucky in the eye again, his own red and bloodshot. “It’s got nothing to do with me, mind you. I was going to school down in Baton Rouge. Gossip around the seminary, but we didn’t give no credence to rumors.”

Bucky flips a bottle cap over in his thumb and finger.

“Why’d you leave?” He asks.

“Bureaucracy,” Summers half-laughs. “Politics.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Bucky warns. “Why’d you leave?”

Summers draws in a breath, shaky, then lets it out through his nose. He looks at the surface of the bar as he speaks.

“Part of our lay duties was custodial,” he says. “One night, cleaned the senior minister’s library. I knocked over a very old volume, ‘The Letters of Telios DeLorca.’ 12th-century Franciscan mystic, very obscure—and when I go to pick it up, this little folder falls out.” He’s still staring down at the bar top, not blinking. “Little folder of pictures. Pictures of—of children. Naked. Looked like they was sleeping.”

“And what’d you do?” Bucky feels like he’s holding his breath. He hasn’t told Steve he was seeking out the Reverend, but he’s itching to get back to tell him about this.

“I took it over to the morals officer, Deacon Pierce. He’s a cousin of Alexander Pierce, I think. Anyhow, this deacon was close to Stryker, vice president of the college.”

“He didn’t do anything?” Bucky flips the bottle cap in his hand, feeling the ridges in the rim.

“He…” Summers’s eyes go glassy—glassier, really. “No, he seemed…he got angry that I’d brought it to him. He even intimated that maybe I was confessing to something. I mean,” he laughs frantically, a hysterical, awful sound, “I had to prove to him that I wasn’t…anyways, he promised to look into it. I’d left by the time Wellspring shut down.”

Bucky ponders this for several moments, turning the cap over and over in his palm.

“Why’d you quit the revival, hmm?” He asks Summers.

“Oh, our last two tents was vandalized,” Summers waves him off. “I lost heart. Little too much of this,” he gestures at the empty glasses next to him. “All my life, I wanted to be nearer to God…but the only nearness…silence.”

  
. . .  
  


 _2011_  
  
“What happened in ’05?” Carter asks.   
  
“You…you pulled our last case? Belladonna Boudreaux?” Steve frowns.

“It was in all the papers,” Morales reminds him. “The ‘Marshland Medea,’” he quotes.

“Yeah,” Steve nods. “We…had a lot of static after that, me and him. That was a bad one. It contributed to his state of mind when he walked, and mine too.”

. . .  
  


_2005_   
  


“SIDs.” Steve walks around the table, sits down. “It’s a four-letter word, S-I-D-S, but, I mean…what is it?”

Bucky sits down next to him, settling easily into the back and forth technique they’ve developed working together.

“It’s an old word, like a curse,” he says. “Not a language anyone speaks, but, it’s what happened to Jessica, your first.”

The woman across from them has deep shadows under her eyes, and hair that’s long and full of tangles.

“They said…your second, Jody, was 23 days old,” Steve reads from the file. “Autopsy showed no signs of trauma, so…SIDs it is. He looks up at the woman, makes her look at his eyes. “I lost one myself, Belladonna. Lost a marriage, too.”

“Now, your third,” Bucky cuts in, picking up right where Steve wants him to. “You had him last year—Jesus, lady, you ever hear of a fuckin’ condom?”

“Birth control’s a sin,” Belladonna says shakily, not blinking. “A child is a wonderful thing.” She sniffles, then sobs outright.

“A child is wonderful,” Steve agrees. “But, you see, sometimes people…they mistake a child as an answer for something, you know? Like, a way to change their story.” He puts down the file so Bucky can take it. “Belladonna, you ever hear of something called Munchausen by Proxy?”

She shakes her head, whispers ‘no.’

“At exactly 4:49 AM, the sleep apnea monitor that was hooked up to your child was unplugged for…let’s see…thirty-six minutes. Then, it was plugged back in, and by that time, the child’s vitals had flatlined.” Bucky reads from the file.

Belladonna gasps softly, tears streaming down her dirt-streaked face.   
  
“Belladonna, I need you to talk to me about some things,” Steve says seriously, but gently. “OK?”

“…Okay,” comes the watery reply.

“You should sign that,” Steve points to the confession. “The newspapers are gonna be tough on you…and prison is very,” he sighs, feeling exhausted by the weight of this, “Very hard on people who hurt kids.” He puts his hand on top of hers. “If you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself.”

Belladonna goes rigid. “What?”

She bursts into tears, shaking her head.

“Jesus,” Bucky gives her a last look over his shoulder as he follows Steve out the door.

  
When they’re at their desks, he shakes his head.

“That evil bitch,” he mutters. “I called Pennsylvania, tried to get homicides on the first two kids, but it looks like we may only have the one.”

Steve sighs. “Well, it’s still life,” he says, then frowns. “Listen, Buck, will you type the report up for me?”

“Excuse me?” Bucky’s irked, and feeling strange, having witnessed his lover just calmly tell a person to kill themselves. “You got somewhere to be? This confession is like forty goddamn pages.”

“Oh, and you got somewhere to be?” Steve challenges. “Come on, man.”

Bucky can already feel the irritation ebbing away, though, because Steve doesn’t look haunted like he did a year ago. He’s not a hollowed-out shell of a man, and that’s something to be happy about.

“You want me to tie your shoes for ya, while I’m at it?” He squints up at Steve, but it turns into a grin. “Yeah, alright, just go. Call me later, yeah?”

Steve returns his smile, and the light of it reaches his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says. “You know I will.”

. . 

“You’ve been trying to open up old cases,” Steve says, and Bucky doesn’t respond for a minute.

They’re in Steve’s apartment, lying in the tangle of sheets, naked. Needless to say, Bucky wasn’t prepared for this right now. He casts about for something, anything he can use to rebut.

“What, like you haven’t been doing the same?” It’s all he can think of to say back, and he’s relieved when Steve’s chest starts to move with quiet laughter. “You’ve been going around bothering people, trying to open up old cases. Phillips asked about it.”

“I know,” Steve says between chuckles. “Iberia called about it. God, we’re a pair, aren’t we, Buck?”

Bucky smiles, feeling that same sense of rightness that he so often feels with Steve in these private moments. He can’t resist pressing a kiss to the corner of Steve’s mouth at that.

“We certainly are,” he agrees.

.

_Bucky  
_

“I was actually one of the men who found Gwen,” Bucky tells the nurse. “Several years gone, now.”

The nurse looks tired, but she leads him down a narrow hallway and into a room with fading wallpaper, printed with happy animals and flowers.

“She’s in there,” the nurse nods, and follows Bucky into the room.

Gwen is older now, around thirteen, with dead eyes and skin as pale and blue as skim milk. She’s in a rocking chair, just sitting stone-still, staring at the wall. A blanket is around her thin shoulders.

“Gwen,” Bucky says gently. “Now, you might not remember me, but you and I met awhile ago.” He crouches down on the floor, so he’s at eye-level with her in the chair. “I want to ask you a question about those men that hurt you way back then.”

Gwen says nothing, just stares. Her fingers tighten on the armrests of the chair, though, the knuckles going white.

Bucky notices this, but decides to press on.

“Do you remember if there were more than two? Was there anyone else?”

The nurse sighs, like she’s about to tell him to take a hike, but Gwen makes a small mewling noise.

“The man with the scars was the worst,” she whispers, voice reedy and thin.

“My Lord,” the nurse gasps.   
  
“What scars?” Bucky asks the girl, trying to keep his voice gentle and soft.

“The giant,” Gwen’s face crumples. “He made me watch what he did to Peter.”

Bucky knows he should leave, that he should maybe never have come, but he’s here now, and he needs to ask.

“The scars on the giant, were they…were they on his face?”

“His face…” Gwen’s eyes widen, unblinking. “His _face._ ” Her voice trembles, climbing up the octaves in terror. “ _His face_.”

She screams, and starts sobbing and thrashing violently.

“All right, Rose, I need Haldol,” the nurse calls down the hall to an orderly. “You need to go,” she tells Bucky.  
  


Bucky nods, turns on his heel.  
  


.  
  


“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Barnes?” Phillips says when the door to his office is shut. “Riling people up, opening old cases. You know Iberia Sheriff’s talking jurisdictional complaint. What’s this about? This ain’t what people expect from you. Rogers, maybe, but not you.”

Bucky doesn’t sit down, instead choosing to pace around the small room, agitated.

“Look, something’s going on, Major, along the coast.” He runs a hand through his hair, but it falls back into his eyes, too long on top. “Women…children disappearing. Nobody hears about it, nobody puts them together.”

“First I’m hearing about it, Barnes,” Phillips frowns at him. “And put what together, son? What you mean?”

“Someone, maybe more than one someone, is killing people, Major. They’ve been doing it for a long time,” Bucky looks him dead in the eyes, stares until Phillips looks away first.

“Yeah, and you got any bodies to back up these claims, Detective?” Phillips looks pissed, now. “You got something actually applies to your job as a homicide detective?”

Bucky ignores his question, lost in thought. Phillips slams a hand on the table.

“Pay attention when I’m talkin’ to you, boy!” He’s not fucking around. “You know what he did?” Phillips turns to Pierce, who’s just poked his head in through the door. “You know what this fool did?” Phillips nods to Bucky. “He goes and visits Gwen Stacy, sent her into a screaming fit.”   
  
Pierce eyes Bucky with a cold sort of distaste.

“Look,” Bucky says, “Either we don’t find them, or they don’t get connected—I don’t know which, and I can’t decide if it’s a cover-up or the garden-variety incompetence here. I mean, it has to do with those boys we got in ’04, the Lorna Dane killing. We didn’t get ‘em all.”

Pierce’s mouth is a tight, angry line.

“You’re building something in your head,” he tells Bucky. “You’ve been paired up with Rogers for too long. He’s messing you up.”

“Women, then children,” Bucky continues, unable to stop his rambling. “Now, they’re getting no press, the way things in the bayou get no press. It’s happening in the same area that Voudon shit goes down, and it’s happening in the same area where those schools were set up.”

“The fuck schools are you talking about?” Phillips squints at him

“Tuition reimbursement programs for rural and Christian schools founded by Billy Lee Stryker,” Bucky spits. “Think about it. Why was he so fired up to get his ass down here, back in ’03?”

“Careful, Detective,” Pierce warns, but Bucky barely hears him.

“He comes barging in with his task force, fuck, before we even got started on the case, he took it over. And why? ‘Cause he recognized something in it. We’re in a muddy swamp here, man. Alligators are swimming around us, and we don’t even know whether they’re there, you know why? ‘Cause we can’t see ‘em.”

“I caught zero logic in all that,” Phillips drawls tiredly. “And that last bit? Pure gibberish. How about we track all the missing persons within ten miles of every Walmart, huh? Right along the I-10. Why don’t we go after Sam Walmart?”

“You need to pull him,” Pierce says to Phillips, gesturing at Bucky. “Mental exhaustion, I think.”

“You want to stay on?” Phillips points sharply at Bucky, who nods. “Do not ever, ever say that to anyone in State again. Not ever.”

“Sure thing,” Bucky says, no trace of emotion in his voice, then laughs “That’s some fuckin’ nerve you got, buddy.”

“All right, hey,” Phillips raises a hand. “Watch yourself, Barnes, do you know who you’re talking to right now?”

“You need to step back, son,” Pierce says. “No more visiting victims’ families, no more trying to turn missing persons in to homicides, as you do not have any bodies. That is a direct order, is that clear, Detective Barnes?”

“You do anything else, I’ll have you on insubordination, and I will suspend you. And Rogers, just on principle. Don’t think I ain’t heard about his little trips across parish lines.”

Bucky looks away from the two men, coughs into his sleeve.

“Please,” Pierce says calmly. “Take some time. Go fishing, go on a vacation. Get yourself together.”

Bucky leaves without saying a word.  
  


. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“And a little over two years ago, Stryker overdosed,” Carter says, though she’s telling Steve what he already knows. “Accidentally, supposedly.”

“Yeah, you did mention that already,” Steve replies flatly. His patience is long-gone, but for some reason, he hasn’t left yet.

“Couple of weeks before he died, Stryker’s house in Shreveport was broken into,” Morales tells him. “Found out his Baton Rouge one was, too. Unreported, though.”

Steve fights the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah?” He asks, tone heavy with attitude. “So?”

“So, your boyfriend gets a hard-on for Stryker—which, I might add, is your fault, planting that seed in his head—then, the man’s house gets broken into right after Barnes turns back up in the state.” Carter tilts her head, looking like nothing so much as a cat eyeing a bird. “What’s he been doing since, here?”

“Drinking,” Steve snorts. “Bartending, which is just the way he dresses up his drinking.”

“Dude with a mind like that,” Morales raises his eyebrows. “You really think that’s all he gets up to?”

“Steve, he never went anywhere,” Carter says seriously. “He never left. He’s been right here, doing bad things for a long, long time.” She closes the folder.

“You know, I think I will leave now,” Steve gets up, ready to vacate this room for a second time.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Morales raises his hands. “Hold up now.”

“Been in this room a long time, detectives.” He pushes in his chair. “Whatever Bucky is or was, whatever I was or am now, whatever we became…don’t call me again. I won’t help you.”

“We’re trying to help him, Steve,” Carter says, trying on her good-cop act. It doesn’t really work for her.

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Steve laughs wryly, then leaves the station for the second time today.  
  


. . .

  
_2005_   
  


“Reverend,” Steve reaches out to shake Billy Lee Stryker’s hand. “Thank you for taking the time to see me on such short notice.”

He’s at the college in Baton Rouge, hasn’t told anyone he was going. He knows about how Bucky got his ass handed to him by Phillips and Pierce, knows that they’re both two seconds away from being suspended. He can’t help himself, though.

“Of course, Detective,” Stryker smiles, and it’s the benign smile of a predator who’s hiding in plain sight. “Please, come with me.”

They walk through the building, its architecture odd and disorienting. Not a lot of structures down here built this way. It makes Steve feel on edge. Unsettled.

“This is a very interesting…building,” he says, remembering his manners.

“This was the first,” Stryker replies, pride obvious in his voice. “Built in 1980. The rest of the campus grew around it. Now, I remembered you, of course,” he goes on to say. “People of this state ow you a great deal.”

“Not as much as they owe you,” Steve smiles. “Charitable organizations, education initiatives. You have to admit, it’s quite an empire you’ve built doing the Lord’s work here.”

Stryker sighs, obviously vain enough to be enjoying the flattery Steve’s laying on thickly.

“Thank you. We’re very proud of our ministries.” He smiles, and it makes Steve’s skin crawl. “I don’t do as much preaching as I used to, but the legacy program is more my focus now, the things like the State Policemen’s Charity…but…what did you want to talk about, son?”

They’ve reached a spacious office, the walls lined with floor to ceiling windows. Stryker sits down behind a vast mahogany desk, and gestures for Steve to sit in one of the chairs across from it.

“The Wellspring program, mid-nineties through late,” Steve cuts to the chase. “You remember that?”

Stryker nods thoughtfully. “Well, of course I remember, yeah. What about it?”

“I’m trying to locate old personnel, faculty, but I’m having a little bit of trouble acquiring names.”

“Well,” Stryker shifts in his seat, his large body redistributing, “Program was shut down officially, you know, maybe six years ago. Never had much ground contact with it myself, but it involved a number of private schools…enterprises, you understand…that would adopt our standard of curriculum and, in return, receive tuition reimbursement for underprivileged students.”

Steve tries to keep the pleasant attitude he came in with.

“Would you happen to have any files, any lists of faculty?” He asks.

“Well, that’s exactly what I’m getting at, Detective Rogers,” Stryker sighs. “These were private institutions, so you’d have to track down their specific administrators, I believe.”

Steve smiles, a bashful, self-deprecating expression he perfected a long time ago.

“See, that’s the thing, sir. All the schools dissolved with the program, and I’m trying to find some tax info, but there were religious exemptions.”

“Well, there’s our archives, of course,” Stryker suggests. “We did lose a lot of files, had some flooding of one of the sub-floors. But, you know, I think I should put you together with one of our clerical workers, see if they can’t help you find something.”

Steve nods. “Thank you. Listen, before you do that…former deacon of yours, I believe his name is Andrew Pierce?”

“That was very, very unfortunate,” Stryker shakes his head, looks grave.

“He was dismissed,” Steve looks to the older man for confirmation.

“Evidence had accrued,” Stryker agrees. “It became apparent that Andrew had implemented certain…funds. Well, I suppose ‘embezzling’ is the word.” He sighs deeply, jowls quivering. “We elected to handle it internally, rather than pursuing formal charges. And then he had his…accident.”

“I heard he’d taken it hard,” Steve watches carefully for Stryker’s reaction. “He was drinking.”

“Yep,” Stryker nods. “Yes, indeed. I’ve seen more souls lost down a bottle than any pit. At the same time, it’s hard to trust a man who can’t trust himself with a beer, don’t you think?”

He looks dead at Steve when he says this, his pale blue eyes calculating. Steve swallows the bile that rises in his throat, along with the flare of anger at the thought that this man might have checked into his past.

“But what’s this about, now?” Stryker asks, turning suspicious. “Wellspring program, Andrew Pierce?”

“Dead women and children, sir,” Steve says, not breaking eye-contact.

“Terrible.” Stryker shakes his head again. “That’s just terrible. How is it going? What you’re working on?”

“Oh, I can’t say anything about it at this point in the investigation, Reverend,” Steve ducks his head again, fake-subservient.

“I’d like to set you up with a clerk,” Stryker smiles, though it seems nervously pasted on. “You can look at, uh, whatever information we still have from Wellspring.”

Steve stands to leave. “Why did the Wellspring program shut down, Reverend?”

Stryker looks like he’s just swallowed a bug. “Couldn’t sustain its costs, I’m afraid. We’ll reintroduce the idea, once we get the school voucher program instituted. People should have a choice in education, like anything else.”

“Of course,” Steve agrees.

Stryker calls for a young man with sweat-stains under his arms.

“Robbie? Robbie, would you show this detective to our old archives for outside ministries?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replies.

“I’ll call ahead,” Stryker says with a smile.

“Thank you for your time today, Reverend. I really appreciate it,” Steve reaches out for a handshake, which Stryker returns.

  
“Godspeed, Detective,” he says. “You’ll be in my thoughts.”  
  
As he walks back out through the long, odd hall, Steve just keeps thinking,  _you motherfucker, you motherfucker. you--_

  
.  
  


“You out of your goddamn mind, hmm?” Phillips corners Steve as soon as he gets back to the station. “What the fuck did I tell you? You’re fuckin’ unbelievable, boy.”

Bucky comes over, trying to ask Steve with his eyes what’s going on.

“You know about this?” Phillips turns to him.

“Uh,” Bucky looks away. “I’m not sure what we’re talking about, here.”

Phillips smiles nastily. “Your partner here, he braced Billy Lee Stryker.”

“ _‘Braced?’_ ” Steve sneers. “Really?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Bucky turns to Steve.

“It was a friendly conversation,” Steve says.

“Hey, dipshit , you don’t get to decide what kind of conversation it was,” Pierce says coldly.

Bucky frowns at Steve. “Why’d you talk to Billy Lee Stryker?”

“And you,” Pierce rounds on Bucky. “What did I tell you the other day? You look like you haven’t seen your own bed in a couple of days. What the fuck is wrong with you two?”

Steve looks away, and Bucky looks at the floor. They’re very close to being in deep, deep shit right now. Bucky prays that Steve will just keep his mouth shut.

Of course, he doesn’t; it’s Steve Rogers.

“If Stryker was pissed of after the conversation we had, that I’m fucking onto something,” Steve says, pointing a finger.

“Shut the fuck up, Steve,” Bucky hisses.

“I told you,” Phillips shakes his head, scowling. “I fuckin’ told you! Both of you!”

“Badge and gun, Rogers,” Pierce nods at them. “And yours too, Barnes. One month without pay.”

“Come on,” Bucky throws his hands up in disbelief.

“I damn told you,” Phillips half-yells. “Repeated rank insubordination, misallocation departmental resources, and I could go on.”

“Chester,” Bucky says, hoping to appeal to the Major who used to actually like him.

“ _Don’t you fuckin’ Chester me!_ ” Phillips slams his hands on his desk. “I told you both! Cut the shit! It’s done.”

“Badge and gun, Rogers,” Pierce repeats.

Steve glares at both superiors, laying his gun down on the desk, then his badge.

“Oh, and before your official reinstatement, you have thirty hours mandated departmental counseling.” Phillips says, like he’s almost sorry about that part.

“Are you fuckin’ serious?” Bucky squawks. “Unbelievable.”

“I’m the person least in need of counseling in this entire fucking state,” Steve spits.

“You ain’t acting right,” Phillips says sternly. “You don’t sound right. You’re up my ass, and you were warned. Now get out.”

Bucky leaves, burning with anger he has no outlet for. He doesn’t wait for Steve, or watch to see where Steve goes.

He goes home, sits in the shower until the water goes cold. Then, he drinks.

  
.  
  


There’s a knock on the door, and it startles Steve out of the brooding miasma of his thoughts.

When he opens it, Bucky’s standing there, hair falling out of its normal coiffure, eyes bleary. He reeks of booze, but Steve opens to door wider to let him in.

“This is fucked, Rogers,” he says, voice slurring. “He’s doing it, they’re doing it, and now we’re suspended.”

Steve goes to the kitchen, fills a clean glass with water from the tap, then comes back into the main room. He hands the glass to Bucky.

“We’re off the job,” he says. “Drink this.”

Bucky scowls, but he takes a sip anyway. He sways on his feet a little, and Steve reaches out with both hands to steady him.

“Why the fuck would you go see Stryker without telling me, huh?” He demands, sloshing the water in the glass so some spills down his front. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Steve says nothing. He’s jonesing for a hit of something, but lately he’s been trying not to use. It’s hard, and he keeps slipping up. He thinks that maybe he ought to get into a program.

“Fuckin’ Billy Lee Stryker,” Bucky spits out the name like it’s a wad of foul tobacco. “It all keeps coming back to him, doesn’t it? He’s the spider in the center of this fucked-up web.”

Steve doesn’t know how to respond. He can’t talk to Bucky when he’s like this, can’t expect them to be able to hash out their little secret investigations right now. His veins are itching, tightening. He’s got a couple of pills left, a little coke, but he can’t do it in front of Bucky. He won’t.

“C’mon, pal,” he says gently, taking the glass of water from his partner’s hand. “Let’s get in bed, yeah? Laying down sounds like a good idea.”

Bucky allows himself to be led like a child to the mattress, to be helped out of his shoes and pants, tucked in under the thin blankets.

“How come you didn’t tell me you were going to see Stryker?” Bucky mumbles, eyes already closing. “I told you…’bout when I went to…went to the bar…”

Steve guesses he means about Reverend Summers, where he’d got that story about Wellspring, the photos of children. He says nothing, just climbs into the bed beside Bucky, reaches up to stroke his hair.

“You don’t love me,” Bucky says sadly, with all the slurred surety of someone who’s piss-drunk. “I love you, so I thought it’d be okay, but… I think I was wrong.”

Steve feels that in his chest, like a dirty blade between his ribs.

“Bucky,” he says, and feels helpless. “Bucky, no.”

Bucky yawns, and rolls into Steve’s chest.

“You don’t have to lie to me, Steve,” he mumbles. “That just makes it worse.”

It’s a long time before Steve can even think of how to reply, but by that time, Bucky’s already fast asleep, passed out cold.

He, on the other hand, lies awake for a long time.

He wonders how the hell he can tell Bucky how wrong he is. He wonders how it isn’t obvious as the sun in the sky, how he feels about the man in his bed.  
  


.  
  


Bucky wakes, groggy, his head splitting. He realizes where he is, and he disentangles himself from Steve’s limbs so he can stumble toward the bathroom.

Locking the door, he splashes cold water on his face a few times, looking at his red eyes and slack expression in the mirror. There didn’t used to be a mirror in here, before; Steve must be trying to be more like a normal human being.

“Fuck, this headache,” Bucky winces, and opens the cabinet in search of aspirin.

He scans the bottles of pills, all orange prescription bottles with the labels scraped off. They contain little round ones, blue ones, oblong ones, big ones, triangular ones. At least ten different types of pills, none prescribed to Steve.

Also in the medicine cabinet is an unopened packet of two syringes, and a little baggie of what Bucky’s relatively sure is cocaine.

It’s like a slap in the face. He wakes up all the way, feeling his stomach start to knot up. How long has Steve been doing this? Where does he get them from?

And, the real bitch of it is, that he could have told Bucky. He could have told him, Bucky wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have judged. Not really. Not after all the things they’ve been through together, and apart.

And really, Bucky gets it, he does; he gets why Steve would use.

But he didn’t tell Bucky, and it hurts.

It fucking hurts.

Bucky closes the medicine cabinet, then pads quietly back into the main room, collecting his things as silently as possible. He freezes when Steve stirs on the mattress, but exhales with relief when he doesn’t wake. Thinking of something, he goes back into the bathroom, grabs one of the syringes, a few of the pills. He puts them into his pocket. 

Bucky leaves with the foul taste of stale alcohol still on his tongue, and a sharp, bitter pain in his chest.

It eats at him.

He stops on the side of the road to throw up, but all that comes out is foamy bile.  
  


The needle and the drugs feel like a hot iron in his pocket, burning against his leg. 

  
. . .

  
_2011_   
  


“We have police records of a 911 call placed by a neighbor of the house where you and Barnes used to live,” Carter says over the phone. “There was an altercation between Steve and James. Did you know what it was about?”

Natasha exhales sharply, rolls her eyes at her husband Clint, who’s busy stirring pasta sauce in a pot on the stove.

“You should know that, detective. Isn’t it in the reports?”

“It’s just cited as ‘personal differences,’” she says.

“James found out about Steve’s drug habit. It really hurt him, the fact that Steve had kept it from him. After that, there was no salvaging the relationship.” Natasha doesn’t like thinking about it; she remembers exactly how despondent Bucky had become after the fight with Steve. “Now, can you people be satisfied with that, and leave me alone? I’m a very busy woman.”

“Sorry to have bothered you, ma’am,” Carter says politely. “Thank you for your time.”

“Sure thing,” Natasha replies, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Bye now.”

She hangs up, then groans.

“I take it that was one of the detectives from earlier,” Clint says, not bothering to turn away from the simmering sauce. “Persistent bunch, aren’t they?”

Natasha takes a large sip of wine, sitting back in her chair.

“You have no idea,” she tells him. “They think Steve and James killed those women, back in ’03. Ridiculous.”

“God,” Clint shakes his head. “What kind of people are they hiring nowadays? I’m glad I got out while the getting was good.”

“Me too,” Natasha agrees. “I like having a house-husband, anyway.”

“I know you do,” Clint throws her a smirk over his shoulder, and Natasha lets herself smile into her wine.  
  


. . .

  
_2005_

  
“So, we’re good, you and me?” Bucky asks in the car.

He wants to believe that if he gives Steve the chance, he’ll come clean about the drugs. He’s giving him one more opportunity. Maybe that’s weakness; maybe not.

“Of course, Buck,” Steve turns to look at him, a quizzical frown on his face. “What’s this about?”

Sighing, Bucky signals for a left turn.

“It’s nothing, nothing. Just…you’d tell me, if something were wrong, wouldn’t you?” He’s glad to be driving, so he has something else to focus on. He doesn’t think he could stand to see the look on Steve’s face when he lies.

“You know I would,” Steve says, and Bucky wonders if everyone in a ten mile radius can hear the groaning lurch his heart gives just before splitting down the middle.

He swallows, keeps his eyes on the road.

“Okay, pal,” he says, falsely bright. “Just making sure.”

There’s a bitterness edging in on the back of his tongue as he says it.

. .

_2005 - two days later_

“I did some, you know,” Bucky says bitterly. “Some of your stash. Took it home in my pocket, one of your syringes and a pill. Crushed it up, cooked it. That’s how you do it, right?”

Steve looks sick—all the color drains out of his face, and his mouth hangs open a little.

“Buck, _no_ ,” he sounds pained. “You didn’t.”

“What, it’s okay for you, but not for me?” He shoves Steve in the chest with both hands, hard. “How’s that fuckin’ fair?”

“ _Shit_ , James, stop it!” Natasha says sharply, but Bucky just sees red.

All he can see when he looks at Steve now, are all the lies. The drug abuse that was right under his nose this whole time, when he slept in Steve’s bed, told him things… Steve kept this from him, this big thing like a vast, dark chasm between them that Bucky had no idea even existed until several hours ago. He thinks about the fresh tracks in the crook of his arm, put there by the needle Steve had intended for his own veins. He feels sick all over again.

“It’s not for anyone to know,” Steve says quietly. “I wanted to tell you, I swear.”

“You motherfucker,” he growls, rushing at Steve. “Were you ever gonna tell me? Huh?”

“Back off, Bucky,” Steve raises his hands in front of him, not flinching. “I’m serious, you don’t wanna do this.”

“Like hell I don’t,” Bucky grits, throwing a punch that doesn’t quite land.

“Hey, hey!” Natasha is trying to break them apart, keep them at arm’s length of each other.

“Get out of the way, ‘Tasha,” Bucky says darkly. “This is between me and Rogers.”

“He’s right,” Steve says to her, sounding sorry. “You should leave.”

“ _Fuck_ you both,” Natasha hisses. “Fucking men.” She leaves, going back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

Steve blocks Bucky’s fists easily, but he doesn’t try to return fire.

“C’mon, you motherfucker!” Bucky is beyond furious. He feels betrayed, and hurt, and none of it is sitting right. He wants to ruin something. Everything.

“I don’t want to do this,” Steve says evenly. “You’re my friend.”

Bucky laughs bitterly. “Is that what I am?”

He gets Steve across the jaw, good and solid, a crack of bone against bone.

“Please, Bucky,” Steve asks quietly. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“Shut up!” Bucky shouts, rushing at him again. He lands another punch, this time getting Steve in the bridge of his thrice-broken nose.  _Good_ , he thinks viciously, seeing the blood start to ooze from one nostril.  _Good_. 

Steve sighs, looks so broken. Then, he fights back.

They’re less evenly matched than Bucky had originally supposed; Steve is built like a tank, and he knows how to use his muscle. The punches he throws are heavy and followed-through.

There are a few neighbors who’ve come outside to watch, cheering or shouting worriedly. One woman is calling the police, Bucky thinks.

Steve gets him good, in the stomach, and he doubles over in pain, coughing.

“Stay down, Bucky,” Steve warns.

“I’m not finished with you,” Bucky groans, spitting out a wad of saliva tinged with blood. “You piece of shit, you fucking liar.”

Steve raises his hands again, lets Bucky lay into him. He takes blow after blow across the face, in the chest, the stomach. He stays on his feet, not fighting back.

“You better calm your shit, James,” Natasha calls from the doorway. “The police will be here any minute.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says, spitting out some blood onto the sidewalk. “I’m leaving.”

“You don’t come near me,” Bucky hisses, getting in close. “You don’t talk to me, don’t look at me, just forget that I exist, alright?”

“Bucky,” Steve sounds pained, looks pained. Bucky sneers, face twisting up all ugly.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” He says hatefully, then turns around and walks back toward his house.

He doesn’t look behind him, but he hears Steve’s truck door slam, hears the engine rev.

  
Hears him drive away.

  
Natasha doesn't speak to him for three days. 

  
. . .  
  


_2005_   
  


Hurricane Katrina decimates New Orleans, the levees break.

Baton Rouge and its outlying areas are swarmed with refugees in need of shelter and medical attention.

Steve doesn’t see Bucky again. He goes into the city to volunteer, to take care of the people.

Bucky goes somewhere else.  
  


Somewhere Steve can’t follow.

  
. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


The horn honks repeatedly, and Bucky ignores it.   
It honks again, and he sighs, yanking the keys out of the ignition and opening the door.

“Bucky,” Steve says, already out of his truck.

“Steve,” Bucky sighs. “Long time.”

“Long time,” Steve agrees. “You change your hair?”

Bucky grins. “Fuck off. I thought maybe you’d wanna talk. Looks like I was right.”

“Buy you a beer?”

“Sure,” Bucky squints at his former partner. “Sure. You follow me.”

Steve smiles.

“We can swap stories about those cracked theories those detectives tried to lay on us,” he says. “I’m betting they didn’t just try ‘em out on me.”

“You would be correct,” Bucky snorts. “C’mon, I know a place.”  
  


He gets back in his car, keeps checking his rearview the whole way to the roadhouse, like he’s afraid Steve’s truck won’t be there if he looks away for too long.  
  
  
  
  
  
Next up..... Episode 7: After You've Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a wee bit short, but I have a lot planned for the final two episodes. Thank you so much to those of you who are reading and leaving me comments, it really keeps me going! 
> 
> This chapter really deviates a lot from the TD plot, but it had to, because this is a fic haha. I'm so excited to finish up the rest of this, hopefully it will be ALL DONE by the end of the weekend, we shall see! <3


	7. After You've Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2011 - Barnes and Rogers are pushing hard for answers, even if they have to call on some old contacts to do so; meanwhile, Morales and Carter have a close call.

_2011_   
  


The roadhouse is empty, dimly lit even though it’s daytime. The jukebox is playing some old ‘80s hit, something about an angel having a one-night-stand. Bucky doesn’t know or care.

“You look like you’re doing alright,” he says, nodding at Steve’s clean-shaven jaw, his nice suit. “Father time has his way with us all.”

Steve snorts. “Looks like you must’ve pissed him off, then.”

Bucky laughs, then turns it into a cough. “Why are we here, Steve?”

Steve folds his hands on the bar, then looks down at them.

“Lake Charles murder,” he says. “That’s what they told me it was about. I mean, shouldn’t it have been in the paper to draw a line somewhere by now?” He looks at Bucky, eyes startlingly blue. “We can’t trust them.”

Bucky nods, finishing the thought. “And if they’re gonna cover something like that up, who knows what else they’ve covered up?”

“Exactly,” Steve agrees.

“Well, what do you wanna do about it?” Bucky reaches back to tie his hair into a loose bun. He hasn’t washed it in a week, at least. He wipes the residual grease it leaves on his fingers onto the dirty leg of his jeans.

“You don’t seem so good, Buck,” Steve says seriously. “You aren’t okay, are you?”

Bucky draws in a long breath, pushes his beer out of the way, half-empty.

“Most of the last few years, I spent stone-drunk,” he says. “Functional, but hammered. Ain’t no way to live, Steve.”

“I know,” Steve says sadly. “Why’d you come back here, to Louisiana? I know you left.”

Bucky smiles, looks away.

“You know why,” he says. “Same reason we’re sitting here now. A man remembers his debts.”

“I don’t dwell on the past,” Steve tells him, but it’s a lie. It’s a goddamn lie, and they both know it. “I’m not interested in whatever it is you think you owe me.”

“I don’t owe you,” Bucky clarifies, looking him in the eyes. “You don’t owe me. It ain’t like that, Rogers. I’m trying to tell you that we left something undone, and we’ve gotta fix it. I’ve been working on this for two years, and I know you have, too.”

Steve looks away guiltily.

“I never called you, never bothered you with it,” Bucky goes on. “Now, here we are, feels like the right time, doesn’t it?”

“You alienated a lot of people, Buck,” Steve sighs. “You pushed me away, literally. Granted, I fucked up. I should’ve told you about—well, I just should’ve told you, is all. You know, maybe this was a mistake.”

“Wait,” Bucky puts a hand on his arm. “I don’t need to rehash the past with you, not like that. I need your help, need you to do this with me.”

“They said you have some storage shed you won’t let ‘em look at,” Steve says skeptically.

“Damn right,” Bucky agrees, raising his chin a little, defiant.

“Why not?” Steve asks. “Why not shoot straight with them? You’re innocent, so am I. Help them stop wasting their time.”

Bucky laughs. “When did guilt and innocence define the State PD, huh?” He reaches for his beer, gone warm by now. He takes a swig. “Come the fuck on, Steve. You didn’t shoot as straight as you could with them, either, don’t think I don’t know that. I don’t know the sprawl of this thing, alright? These people…they’re all over. Lot of different things, family trees.”

“You’re losing me, Buck,” Steve warns.

 _I already did_ , Bucky thinks bitterly.

“The only way for you to understand what I’m onto here is for me to show you,” he tells Steve. “You gotta come see what I got.”

“Do I have a choice?” Steve sighs.

“Nope,” Bucky says cheerfully. “Now, c’mon.”

  
.  
  


They drive to the storage shed, and Steve wonders, absurdly, if Bucky’s going to kill him. He chides himself for even joking about it in his own head.

“What’re you packing?” He notices just by the way Bucky adjusts the back of his shirt that he’s armed.

“.38,” Bucky replies absently, unlocking the shed and hoisting up the metal garage door.

“Hollow-point?” Steve jerks his head.

“Yeah,” Bucky smiles, then switches on a light somewhere on the wall. The shed lights up, and Steve can see that it’s a makeshift incident room, of sorts. There’s a desk, a cot, a cork board pinned all over with photos and maps and hand-written notes in Bucky’s wavy scrawl. There are boxes and boxes of files. “You never can be too careful,” he tells Steve.

“So, show me what you got,” Steve nods at the various pieces of collected evidence.

Bucky pulls up a couple of folding chairs—they look very much like the cheap deck chairs that Steve’s old apartment used to have—and they sit down.

“Alright,” Bucky says. “Remember, there was no physical evidence connecting Lorna Dane to Simpson’s place out in the woods, which means it probably didn’t go down out there.”

Steve frowns, mostly because he’d forgotten about that.

“Nobody was in a hurry to bring that up,” he agrees seriously. “Two…two women and children gone missing, all taken from areas within a ten mile radius of schools that were funded by Stryker’s Wellspring initiative.”

“Exactly,” Bucky says. “We establish a connection. Who’s in, who’s out, you know? I mean, do people disappear in equal numbers in other parts of the state? How many schools were there?”

“Fourteen,” Steve says roughly. “I remember that. There were fourteen.”

“Not so rusty after all,” Bucky grins. “Now, I’ve covered a surface area, pulled runaways in-state and missing persons, and if you’ll notice, there’s twice as many along the bayous. Don’t know why,” he adds with a shrug. “Somebody oughtta do a study as to why.”

“It’s because those areas are poorer, more prone to trouble,” Steve says quietly, staring at his lap. “More runaways and missing persons from areas like that, doesn’t matter what state you’re in.”

“Why was Stryker so interested in the Dane case, huh?” Bucky leans forward, licks his lips. It’s a tic he’s always had, but for some reason it strikes Steve deeply in this moment, that it hasn’t disappeared with the passing of time. “Remember what Alex Summers said that Simpson told him? That there was a group of rich men, sacrifices.”  
  
“You think Stryker recognized the scene,” Steve realizes aloud. “That’s why he came down there quick-smart with a fuckin’ task force, and why he tripped out when I talked to him in ’05.”

“Got it in one,” Bucky smiles again. He looks so much younger when he smiles. “So, I did some digging. There’s nothing around here that doesn’t make this all conjectural, but,” he raises his eyebrows, “1995, accusations of child molestation at a preschool founded by Stryker. Name of the school was Shepherd’s Flock.”

Steve thinks he should be writing this all down, but he left his sketchpad in the car. He taps his fingers on the underside of his seat, anxious.

“Shepherd’s Flock shuts down, reopens two years later on Pelican Island under the name Light of the Way Academy, where Trish Walker went. And I got an enrollment list…” Bucky digs around in one of the brown cardboard boxes on the floor near their feet, making a small, triumphant noise when he finds what he seeks. “Sixteen kids in the class. One of them turned out to be a young man who’d just showed up for solicitation in New Orleans.”

“Shit,” Steve says eloquently. “Tell me you got more than that.”

Bucky doesn’t disappoint—he stubs out the cigarette Steve hadn’t noticed him light in the first place, and hands him a thin manila folder with some photos and notes inside.

The picture on top looks like a woman at first, the long curly hair, the pouty lips and big doe eyes. Steve sees the little scraggly goatee, though.

“And you said he identifies as male?” He asks Bucky, who nods.

“Yeah, far as I can tell, he’s genderfluid, prefers he/him pronouns—but, look, that’s beside the point, Steve,” Bucky’s got that light in his eyes again, his pupils tiny dots swimming in the sea of his gray-blue irises. “His name is Jason Stryker. Goes by Johnny Joanie on the street, but his real name is still on record. Jason William Stryker.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Swear to god, pal,” Bucky crosses his heart. “And I got him to make an unofficial statement to me, about his time at Shepherd’s Flock. Here, I’ll play it for you.”

He gets out a little tape recorder, the kind that no one really uses anymore, besides cops. The tape is already in it, all set to play—all Bucky has to do is hit the button.

  
. .  
  


_2010_   
  


“Buy you a drink?” Bucky slides into the seat next to Jason Stryker.

Stryker looks at him, approval flashing briefly across his heavily made-up features. Though he’s got a lot of makeup caked on, Bucky can see that the kid can’t be more than twenty.

“You can buy me a lot more than that,” Stryker purrs, crossing and recrossing his stockinged legs. “Might make you take a shower first, though, honey. No offense,” he adds, smiling prettily.

“Just wanna ask you a couple questions, meanwhile you just order yourself whatever you want,” Bucky tells him, careful not to be too much like a cop. He doesn’t need to spook the kid.

Jason purses his lips, but orders a fruity drink with an unnatural pink color. The bartender gives Bucky a nasty, knowing look, but he shrugs it off.

“Shepherd’s Flock?” Bucky tries, once Jason’s had a few sips of his pretty drink. “What can you tell me about it?”

Jason’s eyes widen a little, but other than that, he plays it relatively low-key.

“Why are you askin’ me about that place?” He raises one arched brow. “You’re a real strange guy, mister.”

Bucky allows himself a dry chuckle, shaking his head.

“I am, but that’s neither here nor there. You know, after that school closed down, there was a lot of…talk going around.” He eyes Jason over the rim of his glass as he takes a sip. When he sets it down, a little splashes out and onto the bar counter. “You ever see that reverend…Billy Lee Stryker? You see him around?”

Jason makes a face. He puts his drink down, looks over his shoulder, like he might leave. He doesn’t, though, just sighs and runs a hand self-consciously over his curls.

“You know, I think so, but who can remember way back? That’s how it all started,” Jason smiles, revealing teeth that are starting to yellow from the pipe. “Memory be fucked.”

It’s a lie, and Bucky knows it; he was able to connect the dots, that Jason is a cousin in the Stryker clan. A nephew of the Reverend himself. Bucky knows he has time, though, and he’s confident he can get this kid to fess up to his real connection to Stryker.

“I decided it had all been a dream anyways,” Jason goes on airily. “And I don’t remember if it…” he trails off, going a little glassy-eyed. “We’d go to sleep, only sometimes I didn’t feel like I was asleep. I felt like…I felt like I was still awake, but I must have been sleeping, because I couldn’t move. Just…” he looks at Bucky, then quickly looks away. “I could sort of see under my eyelids.”

“And what?” Bucky asks, trying to maintain his air of semi-casual distance.

“I don’t know,” Jason says, but he curls his lip. “There were men…taking pictures. Sometimes they did other things.”

Bucky knew that this was likely, that he would sooner or later find a survivor of the ‘suspected’ abuse at the Stryker schools, but it still makes his stomach lurch to hear about it firsthand.

“Who were they, the men? Can you remember any of ‘em?”

Jason shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” he says again. “They had animal faces. That’s how come I decided it had to be a dream, you know? Like ‘they had animal faces, well, it had to be a dream.’ That kind of thing.” He sips dazedly at his drink, straw catching on a maraschino cherry.

“Any other kids see this?” Bucky asks.

“One girl,” Jason replies. “I don’t remember her name, so don’t bother asking.” He signals the bartender for another drink, finishing the one in his hand in one final sip. “She first started talking about it, and she seen it too, the faces. I do not remember her name,” he says, like he’s almost amused by it. Like what happened to him, and to the girl, like it was funny.

“Anna Marie Fontenot?” Bucky suggests, keeping a keen eye on Jason. “She would’ve gone by Marie.”

“Maybe,” Jason nods.

“You ever see any of these men’s faces?” Bucky knows that Stryker is losing interest, that he’s likely scanning the bar for another potential mark, so he has to ask these questions quickly.

“Once,” Jason says quietly. “They didn’t all have animal faces. There were three…three younger men. I don’t remember ‘em all, just one. He had,” Jason gestures to his own faces with red acrylic nails, “Real bad scars, all around his mouth, you know? Like the bottom half got all burned up.”

Fucking hell, Bucky thinks to himself. Fucking goddamnit. That mystery man with the scars again, like some bogeyman crawling up from the bayou, trailing water and algae ooze in his wake, reeking of shit and stale rain.

“You know what?” Jason smiles, bites the end of one fake nail coquettishly. “I thought that man, he was a dream, too.”

Bucky swallows, finishes the rest of his drink. He throws some money on the bar for Jason’s two drinks, then hands a wad of cash to Jason himself.

“No,” he says in parting. “I don’t think he was a dream. I’m sorry.”

He leaves. He doesn’t need to see Jason’s face as he deals with the crushing reality of what happened to him.   
  


. . .  
  


_2011_   
  


“I don’t understand,” Steve shakes his head. “Are you saying that this hypothetical killer was, like, an old schoolteacher? Or that it might, what, involve State PD?”

It’s a lot to take in, but he believes it. Goddamnit, he believes it. It all makes sense, just like he’d suspected years ago. State PD had several poisonous roots, as connected as the department was to the Stryker ministry.

“Remember him?” Bucky stands, takes a picture down off his cork board and hands it to Steve. It’s the artist’s sketch of the monster the little girl had described. “When we were on that case in Erath, little girl came forward and said she was chased through the woods by a spaghetti monster with green ears.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Steve breathes, putting it together.

“Yep,” Bucky agrees, seeing the moment of realization as it dawns on Steve. “I think that this is our guy, the man with the scars on his face. We got three separate references. He counts on his fingers. One, the old revival church said a tall man with scars came through, then Gwen Stacy in the hospital, and now Stryker, the hooker in the quarter.”

“I don’t know who he is, I don’t know where he is, I don’t know where this whole thing fuckin’ starts, but it ends with him,” Steve says, rising to his feet. “Shit, Bucky, he’s gotta be a real person.”

“Alright, you know the little township down around Erath?” Bucky makes a pointless little gesture with his hands. “Yeah, that’s where the Stryker family is from. It used to be a pirate hideout, so I’m told, then it was turned into plantations and whatnot. Typical shitty southland history.” He rolls his eyes. “Apparently, this town had a very rural sense of Mardi Gras, like, you know, the men on horses, animal masks, okay?”

“ _Courir de Mardi Gras_ ,” Steve remembers aloud. Peggy had told him about it once; she’d always loved to tell him things he didn’t know. Facts like that.

“That’s right,” Bucky looks mildly impressed. “Now, they had an annual winter festival. Went heavy on the Saturnalia, a place where that Santeria and Voudon all mash together. Have a look.”

He hands some drawings to Steve, stands with crossed arms as Steve thumbs through them. “From the winter festival,” he says.

“Shit,” Steve seems incapable of saying much else right now. There are blindfolds…antlers…masks. Devil traps.

“Got ‘em from a series an artist did in Kenner, right after Katrina,” Bucky explains. “Says he kept running across these ‘stick things’ as he called them. Look familiar?”

“Our man must’ve had a real good time after the hurricane,” Steve says, feeling disgust well up in his chest. “It was chaos…people missing, people gone. Cops gone.”

“I think he probably had a real good year,” Bucky agrees.

“So what do you need me for?” Steve asks, gesturing at the storage unit. “You’ve nearly got this thing cracked.”

“You still got friends on the force,” Bucky says evenly. “Wilson, Quill, Lang…I need case files. Missing persons. Homicides. Title transfers, auto and home. I got a list of names I’m gonna need background checks, tax records, anything we can get on Simpson…”

“Jesus Christ, Buck,” Steve spits. It stings, that Bucky only wants him here for his connections—however tenuous they may be—to the force. He knows it’s stupid, he knows that it’s a lost cause, but there’s still a part of him that wants Bucky to want him around.

“I wouldn’t have bothered you if State hadn’t pulled me on this fuckin’ Lake Charles case,” Bucky argues, but he won’t look Steve in the eye. “Don’t make me beg.”

It hits Steve, in that moment, that Bucky might not know how to ask for what he wants. Steve knows all about that.

“Why not just give it to Carter and Morales?” He asks, though it’s just because he feels like being a dick.

Bucky scowls. “Fuck you. They might be pawns in this thing and not even know it. You know why I can’t…no. It’s gotta be you an’ me.”

“Look,” Steve says carefully. “Eddie Stryker is the senator of this state. The late Reverend Billy Lee is his cousin. We cannot fuck this up in any way, no matter how small.” He frowns. “We were right, Buck. It’s a fuckin’ family thing.”

“That’s what I mean when I talk about the sprawl, Steve!” Bucky grabs him by the shoulders as he says this, fingers digging into the muscle. “Eddie Stryker’s the reason that the Lake Charles thing never made the wire.”

Steve breathes in through his nose, and then exhales deeply.

“Before we go digging into this thing any further,” he says, searching his ex-partner’s eyes, “You have to tell me about Billy Lee Stryker.”

Bucky closes his eyes.   
“He got us suspended, Steve.”

“I know, Buck.”

Sigh. Bucky’s eyes open again, and he lets his hands drop from Steve’s shoulders.

“Billy Lee Stryker owns three houses in Louisiana, the greedy fuck,” he says slowly. “One in Shreveport, one in Baton Rouge, and one in New Orleans. Got one in Florida, too. Who needs that many damn houses? Anyway, I waited until he went on his spring ministry tour in 2010—Look, Steve, are you sure you wanna hear this?”

His eyes are so haunted, and they hold a childlike fear. Steve wants to reach out, to banish that fear with a touch, but he knows he no longer has that right.

“If you did something, it won’t change how I see you, Buck,” he says firmly, in what he hopes is a reassuring voice. “There’s nothing you could do that would be bad enough for that.”

Bucky laughs shakily, then nods.

“Ok, well, remember how you told me about your stint in robbery?” He grins sheepishly. “Turns out, I make a pretty ace B&E man.”

Somewhere in the distance, a dog is barking.

“I staked out his place for weeks,” Bucky continues, “Checked surveillance, mapped security. I found ingresses. And my whole life is just one expanding, circular fuck-up and I think it’s about to close out with me getting clipped in a home invasion,” he glances at Steve, who is trying so hard not to let his horror show on his face. “I mean, what I’m saying is, I was aware that I might’ve lost my mind, okay?”

“Jesus, Bucky.”

“Shaddup and lemme tell the story, punk.” He runs a hand over his dirty hair. “So anyhow, after the second home…doubt got taken behind the woodshed and put down, if you get me. Notice he never reported the Baton Rouge break-in, just the Shreveport house.” He nods at a folder on a card table, yellowing at the edges with age. “Found those in the safe there.”

There are hundreds of photos of women and children, posed as though they’re sleeping, blindfolds over their eyes. Naked. The paper stock is over fifteen years old on some of them, which means that this has been going on for a long, long time.

“Mother _fuck_ ,” Steve curses. “Goddamn it.”

“These…they aren’t as bad if you don’t know what you’re looking at,” Bucky sighs, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. “And…there’s a videotape. Take a look.”

Steve sits down in front of the small television Bucky’s got hooked up in here, pops one cassette into the VCR, and waits with bated breath.

The images that flood in after a moment of static are enough to make his stomach heave. Children, some as young as four years, being—being—

—“Oh, my god,” Steve whimpers. “No.”

Bucky stands next to the chair he’s seated in, saying nothing.

“Fuck,” Steve chokes, eyes never leaving the fuzzy screen. “Fuck. _Jesus_.”

He knows that he’s crying, tears leaking from his eyes with a salty vengeance, but he doesn’t bother wiping them away. Somehow, he’s never really believed in this kind of sick cruelty, even though he has known of its existence. He has worked cases involving children, but never has he watched it through the eye of a sick man’s camera. He has never seen evil like this before.

Well—perhaps once. In that basement, all those years ago. The tape ends, and Steve has just enough time to locate a small wastebasket in which he is subsequently violently ill.

“Did you…” he gasps, wiping his nose on his sleeve, looking up at Bucky, “Did you watch all over that?”

Bucky’s frown deepens. “Yeah. Had to, to see if any of the fuckers took off their masks.”

“God,” Steve scrunches his eyes shut tight, tries to swallow the bile. “Jesus Christ.”

“None did,” Bucky says tonelessly. “That little girl is Anna Marie Fontenot.”

“Jesus Christ,” Steve says again. He rubs at his eyes, not caring how he must look—all red and blotchy. “We have to make this right, Bucky.”

“I know, pal.” He helps Steve to his feet, lays a hand on his shoulder. “I won’t avert my eyes. Not again. I need you on this with me.”

Steve nods, and is struck by the sudden urge to hug the man in front of him.

“Did you kill Stryker?” He asks.

“Nah,” Bucky smiles sadly. “I assume that he was thinking he was gonna be blackmailed. Most likely, some people took him out after they found out what was taken from the safe, before he had a chance to.”

Steve swallows, sniffles through his stuffed nose again, and pushes it all down deep. He’ll let himself cry when this is all over.

“What…what can I do to help?”

“We start by pulling everything there is on Lorna Dane, and start looking into Will Simpson and Brock Rumlow—who’s still alive, by the way—and we check up on those Stryker connections.”

Steve glances at the VCR again, warily, like it might turn into some hideous, gaping-mouthed beast while his back is turned.

“You shouldn’t have that,” he jerks his head at the stack of tapes.

“Nobody should have this,” is Bucky’s reply.

  
.  
  


_Natasha’s house_   
  


The house isn’t in the same neighborhood they lived in together, but much of the decor is the same—Bucky thinks he recognizes several porcelain tchotchkes from Russia on the mantle that used to sit on a shelf in their old living room.

Natasha’s set a tray of tea down on the table between the two couches, still too hot yet to drink.

“I’m glad you’re doing good, ‘Tasha,” Bucky says honestly. “It’s…it’s good to see you. You seem happy.”

Natasha purses her lips and stares across the coffee table, unimpressed as ever.

“I haven’t seen you in over two years, James.” She turns to Steve, who has up until now been doing a decent job of blending in with the sofa cushions. “And you, you’ve had his number all this time, and you never once made contact. Fucking men.”

Bucky sneaks a glance at Steve, who has gone slightly pink and is staring intently at his knees.

“Those cops were asking me a whole lot of questions,” Natasha continues. “They just wanted to know about you two. About the fight, about your relationship.”

“Did you tell them?” Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“Fuck, no. Asshole.” She glares. “They think you…either one of you, or both of you, did something.”

“We know.”

“You didn’t, though.”

“No,” Steve says. “No, neither of us did.”

She looks at them, long and hard, a crease between her eyebrows.

“You haven’t talked since…since that day, have you?” She asks.

Bucky sees Steve’s jaw working, sees his furrowed brow.   
“Not until today,” he tells her.

“So, you’re gonna work on this again,” she surmises. “You’re gonna help each other?”

“We have to finish this,” Steve says earnestly. “We have to make this right—as right as we can, anyhow.”

“You’ll need access to some files,” Natasha taps the side of her nose, barely smiling. “I might be able to help with that.  
  


. . .  
  


“There’s not gonna be a bunch of people coming in and out of this place, is there?” Bucky’s frowning, swiveling his head to get a good look at Steve’s office.

“No,” he rolls his eyes. “What do you think about getting started, though, Buck?”

Bucky grunts, sitting down at one of the desks.

“Practical terms, we’re doing an identify and locate,” Steve says. “I can’t afford to subscribe to all the databases that I used to, but I got Auto Track for motor vehicle records, Flat Rate Info for the QI National People Locator, public records, of course. Nat’s giving us access to her accounts for the databases we don’t have.”

“Sounds good,” Bucky nods. He clears his throat awkwardly, then does it again. “So…how you been?”

Steve laughs, and Bucky frowns a little.

“What, I can’t try to be friendly?” He glares. “C’mon, Steve, throw me a bone, here.”

It makes his chest hurt, this slow crawl back towards some semblance of friendship between them, but that hurt isn’t all bad.

“OK,” he holds up a hand in surrender. “I’m sorry, just caught me off-guard. Well, let’s see…I run, draw a lot in my spare time. Thinking about getting a dog, actually.”

“You seeing anybody?” Bucky interrupts, and it knocks Steve for a loop momentarily.

“Not really,” he recovers enough to say. “Some dates, but…never really panned out. What about you?”

Bucky deadpans him for a second before his face splits into a beautiful grin.

“Not really,” he says, echoing Steve. “Haven’t been looking for anything like that.”

“Me neither,” Steve says, maybe a little too quickly. Does the desperation show on his face? He wonders.

“I kept wanting to call you,” Bucky says this in a hushed voice, like he’s admitting something close to his chest. “Sometimes, I find myself dialing your old cell, almost hitting ‘call’ before I realize that…”

“Still the same number,” Steve says, feeling a little faint. “I thought about calling, too.”

Bucky offers him a small smile, genuine and tentative, and he does his best to return it.

They don’t talk about anything else like that for the rest of the afternoon, but it hovers around, curling warmly about the room for the rest of the time they spend at the office. It’s a comfort, just knowing it’s there.  
  


. .   
  


 _“Got something for you,”_ Natasha’s voice is smug over the phone. _“Background. Brock Rumlow transferred a title on a truck to a James Rumlow. Sounds like a cousin to me, found him in White Castle. Owns an auto shop.”_

“Damn,” Steve shakes his head, grinning. “We owe you, Nat.”

 _“Fucking right, you do,”_ she agrees. _“Pulled up that Anna Marie Fontenot file for you, too. Turns out, it was redacted. Wiped out. Unfortunately, James Rumlow came up spotless. Three kids, wife’s a teacher. Might be worth talking to, though.”_

“Thank you, ‘Tasha,” Bucky says sincerely.

.

“Any relation?” Steve asks, over the roaring buzz machinery.

James Rumlow is clean-cut, in his late-thirties, wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit that’s smudged with grease.

“So many Rumlows around here,” he says, “I never had to worry about a connection. But yeah, my dad’s second cousin or something. Pops didn’t like them none. What’s this about, exactly?”

“Man asked us to locate his daughter,” Steve gives him the agreed-upon line. “It was a long time ago, but it looks like she might have known Brock.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” James says, and looks truly sorry. “Must know what happened to them, sick shits. Pops said it was a shame Brock didn’t die.”

Steve shifts his weight to the other foot.

“Is there anything, anything at all you remember that you can tell us about these guys?” He asks.

James makes a face, like he’s picturing something he’d pushed to a dark, far-off corner of his mind a long time ago.

“Just that they were nuts,” he spits. “Looked at you funny. Will Simpson was always asking about the girls in my school, and a couple times I saw Brock, he just said weird stuff.”

“Any chance you ever saw a third man with them?” Steve tries for casual, and mostly hits the mark. He’s been waiting to ask this question since he pulled up. “A man who had a bunch of scars on the bottom of his face?”

“It’s weird you say that,” James looks at him, brow furrowed. “I mean, besides Brock, after he blew up? I remember that face, the man with the scars. My pop let them use our deer camp once, took me with him.” He chews his lip nervously. “I was like, eleven. They were maybe ten years older than me, introduced us to this guy—his face, underneath his nose and cheeks, all scarred. Gave me funny looks all night. Every time I glanced at him, he was staring at me.”

“Any chance this man was a Simpson?” Steve asks. “Or a Rumlow?”

James looks away. “No. I don’t know. Don’t think so. Anyhow, next morning, they were too hungover to hunt. Pops and I went home.”

“You, uh, ever see him again, the guy with the scars?” Steve motions to the lower half of his face, just out of habit.

“Never again,” James says firmly. “I’d remember.”

  
.  
  


“Fuck, I don’t like this place,” Steve frowns at the records he’s been scrutinizing. “Nothing grows in the right direction.”

“Where’d this woman come from?” Bucky comes up from behind to lean over and get a look. “Tax records?”

“Mhmm,” Steve nods absently. “Ophelia Bouchard, currently still in the state of Louisiana. Drew a paycheck from Stryker’s father. Some kind of housekeeper, nanny, I guess.”

“How’d you find her?” Bucky asks, though he already knows.

“Natasha,” Steve confirms. “Pulled federal income tax records, then matched Social with a credit check run in the late ‘90s for Section-8 housing in Alexandria.”

Bucky slaps him on the shoulder.

“Good job, Stevie,” he lets his hand linger just a few seconds longer.

“High praise from a bartender,” Steve snorts, not bothering to dodge the flick Bucky aims at his ear.   
  


. .  
  


“She gets tired easy, specially as hot as it is,” the young woman with Havana braids who answered the door tells them. “What did you say this was about again?”

Steve doesn’t fault her for her suspicions; people of color, even in a state with such mixed demographics as Louisiana, have a lot more reason to be wary of law enforcement. There’s a despicable history all across North America, from shore to shore—but nowhere has such angry ghosts as the deep American south.

“Thank you for letting us into your home,” he says to the young woman. “I’m Steve, and this is my partner James. We’re private investigators, looking into some ancestral research for a client.”

“Hmm,” the woman says, but shakes Steve’s hand, then Bucky’s. “I’m Monica Rambeau, and you already know my Auntie Ophelia, seeing as how you come looking for her.”

“That’s right,” Bucky says. “We’d like to ask her about her time with the Stryker family.”

“Never knew them Stryker people”—Monica’s lip curls over the name—“I heard stories, though.”

They follow Monica down a stuffy hallway, the walls lined with old photographs of smiling and unsmiling people. In a room at the end of the hall, sitting with her eyes closed in a rocking chair, is Ophelia Bouchard, the woman they’ve come to see.

Steve can see how much she must have once looked like her niece; they share the same smooth, dark skin, the same elongated eyes. Monica is nearly as tall as him, and Steve bets that Ophelia was too, before she was withered and stooped with age.

They sit down in folding chairs adjacent to her rocker, aware of the fact that they are under the hawklike watch of Ophelia’s niece.

“Ms. Bouchard?” Bucky’s voice is gentle and polite. “We’d like to ask you a few questions, if it’s not too much of a bother for you. Is that alright?”   
Monica leans over a little, pitches her voice low so only Steve can hear.

“You think she might get some money out of this?” She asks.

Steve sighs.

“It’s…it’s very possible,” he tells her, making a mental note to pay Ophelia Bouchard out of his own pocket if need be. “It depends on what we find out.”

“You can ask me,” Ophelia says, and her voice is like soothing, cool water. It only trembles with age the slightest bit, and Steve would bet she was a singer when she was young. “But don’t take too long, on account of I got my grand-babies coming to visit in a little while.”

“Of course,” Bucky nods, then digs right in. “You worked for a Mr. Sam Stryker, for 19 years, is that correct?”

Ophelia nods. The beads on the ends of her elaborate braids click-clack with the movement.

“Yes. Out in Erath, then in Shreveport. Worked for the Pierces, too. All them old money white men,” She shakes her head, makes a tutting sound.

“So, you knew Sam’s sun, Billy Lee, then?” Bucky looks up from his notepad. “And their cousin, Eddie?”

“As little boys, mm-hmm,” Ophelia rocks lazily in her chair. “I remember.”

There are several fans whirring in the room, doing nothing but blow the hot air around. Steve feels himself beginning to sweat, damp patches growing under his arms, and at the back of his neck.

“What about extended family?” He asks. “Cousins, you know, that might’ve been close to the boys?”

Ophelia nods, closing her eyes.

“Oh, all sorts of brothers, cousins, kids just runnin’ around. Those days, families were bigger,” she says. “Folks didn’t know how to stop breeding like rabbits.”

Bucky shoots a look at Steve, then asks, “Did, uh, Sam Stryker have kids outside his marriage that you know about?”

“Hmm!” Ophelia snorts, smiling with her mouth closed. “You got to understand, people kept to their own back then,” she tells them seriously. “I mean, a man’s house was his own. Mr. Sam? He had lots of children. All types.”

Monica makes a small noise, and Steve remembers that she’s in the room. For the most part, she seems relaxed, but it’s the way a coiled snake is relaxed; ready at any moment for the time to strike.

“He didn’t like a woman…” Ophelia breaks off to cough, harsh, hacking gasps that wrack her thin body. Steve and Bucky both half-jump out of their chairs to hand her the glass of ice water on the end table beside her.

She drinks, then takes a few breaths until her breathing steadies.

“Thank you, boys. Now, where was I…oh, yes, Mr. Sam, he didn’t like a woman once she had it done to her. He didn’t like them but that one time, not after that.”

So virgins have always been Stryker family preference, Steve thinks with disgust.

“Out of all those kids,” he asks, clearing his throat “All these kids running around, can you remember one that maybe had scars all across the bottom of his face?”

Ophelia’s eyes go a little glassy, like she’s seeing things from a different time, things that they can’t see.

“I…I think that was Mr. Sam’s grandchild,” she says. “His dad did that to him, that poor boy. I think…I think that child was a…a Zola? Or what, Monica,” she turns to her niece, “He was a Rumlow or a Zola?”

“From Mr. Sam’s other family?” Monica asks.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you about this,” Ophelia sucks in a breath, shaking her head again.

“It’s OK,” Bucky assures her. “Ms. Ophelia, could you have a look at something for me? Just one thing.” He hands her the page. “Just have a look, see if you recognize it.”

Ophelia takes the sheet in her arthritic hands, then looks back at Steve and Bucky, frowning.

“You know Carcosa?” She whispers the word, like it has power. “Hydra?”

“What is it?” Steve leans forward in his seat.

“ _‘He who eats time,’_ ” the older woman intones, like she’s quoting. “It’s a wind of invisible voices, a beast with innumerable heads.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” snaps Monica, coming around to put a protective hand on her aunt’s thin shoulder. “Ancestral research, my ass. What you all doing here?”

“Death is not the end,” Ophelia says, voice rising. “Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”

“I think it’s time for you to leave,” Monica says to Steve and Bucky, then leads them out of the room and back down the hall.

.

“Rest of the family don’t even speak to Auntie O,” she tells them once they’re on the porch. “She’s crazy. Dementia. Never had any kind of good life, but most days, she doesn’t even make sense.”

“Yeah?” Bucky looks at her curiously. “She sure made sense to me.”

Monica Rambeau stares at him warily.

“That should worry you, mister.”

She goes back inside, closes the door.

Somewhere in the distance, a train whistle whines, and a gust of hot air sweeps across the porch, rattling the myriad of wind-chimes.  
  


“Sure hope that old lady was wrong,” Bucky says as they trek back to the car.

“About what?” Steve asks, though he’s fairly certain he knows.

“About death not being the end of it,” comes the answer, the one he was expecting.  
  


. . .  
  


 _“Did some backtracking on the Marie Fontenot stuff,”_ Steve says by way of greeting when Bucky answers his cell. _“Got some old sheets. Sheriff signed off on the “report made in error,” but he didn’t take the original complaint on her. Deputy did.”_

“Got a name?”

 _“You ain’t gonna believe this shit,”_ Steve says, and he sounds like he’s been holding his breath.

“Well, don’t make me guess, just spit it out, Rogers!” Bucky is on the edge as it is, feeling like they’re so close to putting the right pieces in the right places in this case.

 _“Cain Marko,”_ Steve says.

“No fuckin’ way,” Bucky breathes. He’s starting to connect dots, his brain going a mile a minute.

 _“I did some double-checking,”_ Steve continues. There’s the faint sound of rushing air, which means he’s driving. _“Before CID, he was with Vermillion Parish Sheriff’s. Erath was his beat.”_

“It fucking figures,” Bucky spits. “If it got covered up, there’s a good chance that fat fuck knows something.”

 _“Didn’t say a goddamn word when we asked about it in ’04,”_ Steve snorts, static through the connection.

“I never liked that piece of shit,” Bucky says venomously. “Where’s the sonofabitch now?”

 _“He’s from Iberia originally,”_ Steve tells him. _“After CID, he went home. He’s the fucking Sheriff of Iberia Parish.”_

“Shit.”

_“You said it.”_

“Steve, the only person who can arrest the sheriff in this state is the governor.” Bucky’s starting to remember how hard it was, working with Steve- _‘rules have no place in the pursuit of Real Justice’_ -Rogers.

_“Well, we aren’t gonna arrest him, Bucky, just have a little chat.”_

“I got news for you, pal, he ain’t gonna talk with either of us.”

There’s a pause, and the crackling sound of more wind rushing past the window. When Steve speaks again, Bucky can practically hear the smirk on his face.

 _“I got a car battery and two jumper cables that would argue differently,”_ he says.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky covers his eyes with a hand while he laughs despite himself. “Don’t start with that shit, Rogers. What do you really think we should do?”

 _“Well fuck,”_ is Steve’s reply. _“He won’t talk to us, that’s true. But, do you think he’d talk to Tony Stark?”_

  
. . .  
  


“You assholes owe me big,” Stark says when they meet him at the diner. “I had to play 18 holes with that walking garbage dump. I’m trying to think of how you can make it up to me, and it’ll most likely involve harsh manual labor.”

“Fine, fine,” Bucky waves him off. “So, did you get anything?”

Stark holds a deadpan expression for five seconds before grinning ear to ear, his dark eyes flashing manically.

“Well, after I got him nice and comfortable, lulled him into a false sense of security,” he signals for a waitress as he talks, “I slid into the questions, real easy, I don’t think he even realized what was happening.” A waitress with large quantities of curly black hair comes to the table. “Uh, yeah, I’ll take a chicken club, if you please.” Stark smiles sweetly up at her. “And, what the hell, sweet tea to drink. Thank you,” he adds when she turns to put his order in.

Steve makes an impatient noise, and Bucky barely resists kicking Stark under the table.

“Okay, okay!” He laughs. “So, Marko says that the girl’s mom was single, up on drug charges, ‘if he was remembering right,’” he rolls his eyes. “Anyways, according to him, her mom didn’t make a fuss after the first notice, so it was officially listed that she ran off with her birth father. Which we already know, but; here’s the good part,” he rubs his hands together and lowers his voice, “Marko never talked directly to the Fontenot family. It was handled by the sheriff at that time, one Arnim Zola.”

Steve looks at Bucky, whose eyes have gone round.

“Zola?” They both say.

“I think we might be able to get a little more out of our pal Cain, though,” Stark says, swiping a fry from Steve’s plate. “Seems to me like someone ought to put a little fear into that spectacular arterial clog he calls his heart.”

Bucky looks at Steve, waiting for the OK. Steve offers only a tiny, tiny shrug, and a wry smile.

“How do you propose we do that?” He matches Tony’s casual tone of voice.

“Oh, that shouldn’t be too hard,” Stark grins. “I already took the liberty of inviting him onto some of my rural property to fish this weekend.” He steals another one of Steve’s fries, cramming it into his mouth with zeal. “You’re welcome.”

  
. . .  
  


“Why’d you come back?” Steve asks out of the blue, while they’re on the road to a very out-of-the-way property owned by Tony Stark.

The question knocks Bucky for a loop, and he takes a few moments to gather his thoughts before replying.

“This,” he says. “I have to finish this, Steve. Before I get on with something else.”  
  


.  
  


“Haven’t been out here in a long time,” Tony says, scratching under the collar of his shirt. “You know, probably don’t get out her three, four times a year. If that.”

He’s lying; he lets people he needs to be in good with for the sake of his company—Stark Clean Energy—use the property to hunt and fish, but Tony has never been and never will be an outdoorsman. He prefers concrete jungles.

“Ah,” Marko, the fat fuck, takes a big whiff of the muggy air. “I do love a reason to drink beer first thing in the morning.”

“Indeed,” Tony smiles falsely, then hunches down over his tackle box to pretend to fix up a lure. “Say, Cain?” He asks, all casual. “I’ve been meaning to ask, you know that Fontenot girl?”

Marko groans. “Remember, she done gone off with her daddy,” he says.

“I just…” Tony tells himself inwardly to stay calm, to not act overly keen. “I wasn’t clear, is all. Humor me, okay? I’m thinking of getting into true crime writing. Was it that you knew for a fact that she went with her dad, or did someone tell you that was what happened?”

There’s a pause.

“The family talked to Sheriff Zola,” Marko says. “The girl’s aunt and uncle, he knew them.”

Tony busies himself with setting up his line, so that he won’t have to make eye contact.

“Who were they?” He asks.

“You know, I’m starting to think this wasn’t just a friendly invitation, huh?” Marko sounds irritated, now, and Tony has to remind himself that Barnes and Rogers are just a little ways away, waiting for the right moment. He’s not in any danger. “I said all I remember about the girl, now don’t ask me again.”

“Okay,” Tony holds up his hands in surrender. “All right. But, the thing is, Cain…I’m not gonna ask you.” He feels the cool, liquid embrace of relief as the two former detectives step out into the clearing at the water’s edge. “They are.”

.  
  


Marko looks like he’s going to run, eyes darting this way and that way in his piggy face.

“I wouldn’t if I were you, Cain,” Steve says easily. He takes several steps, into Marko’s space, looking as frighteningly intense as he used to. “No way you can outrun us. You’re out of your jurisdiction, anyhow, Sheriff.”

Marko’s face twists up into an ugly frown, one that’s got fear riding close under the surface.

“You realize who I am, you assholes?” He spits. “Tony, what the hell is this?”

“Yeah, wouldn’t be here if we didn’t,” Bucky says. “And Tony’s gonna hang back, now. He did his part, getting you out here for us.”   
Cicadas are whirring in the thickets, and the air is soggy around them.

“Don’t look at me,” Stark says with a shrug. “I’m not one of you guys. I can’t control them.”

“You’re done after this,” Marko jabs a finger at Steve. “I’ll have boss crackers splitting your ass in Angola.”

Steve snorts, reaching for the flex cuffs he’s got in his back pocket so he can subdue Marko’s pudgy wrists. “Yeah, we’ll talk about that, and some other things. C’mon.”

They shove him so he starts walking towards Steve’s truck, where they bundle him into the back like cattle to transport back to the little shed Tony told them about on the property. It’ll be nice and quiet there; nobody will come poking around, asking questions.

  
. . .  
  


“Goddamn it, where’s that church Barnes and Rogers were talking about?” Carter is squinting out the windows while trying to keep her eyes on the road ahead as she drives.

It’s been nearly two hours, but they can’t seem to find any building, church or otherwise.

“We’re lost,” Morales sighs. He’s been fiddling around with some game on his phone, but now he seems to have grown bored of it.

“We’re not lost,” Carter snaps. “We’re going in the right direction. We’re heading south.”

“And that’s gonna head us to 49?”

“We’re not looking for the 49,” Carter says, sounding annoyed. “We’re looking for the church.”  
Morales rolls his eyes so hard they might fall out his head.

“I know we’re looking for the church,” he drawls. “But we ain’t got to no church. Ain’t even seen anything that resemble a church. Ain’t nobody out here to even ask where anything is.” He turns over in his seat, closes his eyes. “Let me know when you see something.”

“Ugh,” Carter frowns.

.

They pull up along a road where they see a large man on a ride-on mower, hoping to get some directions.

“Hey, hey!” Carter flashes her badge briefly, and the lawnmower cuts off.

“Yes, ma’am?” The man tugs on his painter’s mask, revealing the scarred, craggy lower portion of his face.   
  
“You know where there’s a little church around here? Pretty old?” Morales asks, dabbing at the perspiration on his brow. “Black minister?”

The man on the mower frowns, then snaps his fingers. The smell of cut grass and gasoline is heavy in the summer air. 

“You must mean Son of Life, officers,” he says. “That place shut down…’05, I think. Just after all them hurricanes.”

“Shit,” Carter says under her breath. “You live around here?”

The lawnmower man shakes his head, looking like some kind of giant beast with his huge frame and those ugly scars.

“No, ma’am. I live in St. Martin, got a parish contract,” he tells them. “Take care of some cemeteries, public schools.”

“Okay,” Carter nods. “Thank you for your time.”

“Hey,” Morales interjects, “You know how to get to 49 from here?”

“Sure,” the lawnmower man nods. “You go about a half-mile, then you’ll see a left. PR 1435, take that. Then, it’s about…seven miles or so of fields. You’ll hit 49 before Crowley.”

“You know your way around, huh?” Carter gives the man a sunny smile.

“Oh, yeah, boss,” the lawnmower says. “My family…”

But Morales has already turned and started back towards the car, and Carter gives the man another, more abrupt ‘thank you’ before jogging a little to catch up to her partner.

  
When the funny little police officers are back in their car, the lawnmower smiles to himself, a strange, uncomfortable smile.

“My family’s been here a long, long time,” he says to no one.  
  


The mower engine sputters back to life, and he resumes his task.  
  
  
  
  
  
Next, the final chapter... Episode 8: Form & Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. There's one more chapter left, and I can't believe it. This fic is sooooo long compared to the stuff I normally write, and for that alone I am proud. 
> 
> These last two chapters are where it really diverges from the TD show canon, so hopefully it'll be new and exciting for those of you who have watched it. 
> 
> Leave me comments, I love love love them. Also, THANK YOU FOR READING! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Shhhhhh
> 
> I hope to update once a week, like episodes. I wrote all of this in one day, so I am going to now go use some eye drops to try and regain some moisture there. Thank you for reading, if you made it to the end! <3
> 
> (Leave me some comments so I know if there's anyone reading this!)


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